A rational method for estimating erodibility and critical shear stress of an eroding rill

Soil erodibility and critical shear stress are two of the most important parameters for physically-based soil erosion modeling. To aid in future soil erosion modeling, a rational method for determining the soil erodibility and critical shear stress of rill erosion under concentrated flow is advanced in this paper. The method suggests that a well-defined rill be used for shear stress estimation while infinite short rill lengths be used for determination of detachment capacity. The derivative of the functional relationship between sediment yield and rill length at the inlet of rill flow, as opposed to average detachment rate of a long rill, was used for the determination of detachment capacity. Soil erodibility and critical shear stress were then regressively estimated with detachment capacity data under different flow regimes. Laboratory data of rill erosion under well defined rill channels from a loess soil was used to estimate the soil erodibility and critical shear stress. The results showed that no significant change in soil erodibility (Kr) was observed for different slope gradients ranging from 5 to 25 while critical shear stress increased slightly with the slope gradient. Soil erodibility of the loess soil was 0.3211 ± 0.001 s m− 1. The soil erodibility and critical shear stress calculations were then compared with data from other resources to verify the feasibility of the method. Data comparison showed that the method advanced is a physically logical and feasible method to calculate the soil erodibility and critical shear stress for physically-based soil erosion models.