Cover and management factors for the Universal Soil-Loss Equation for forest ecosystems in the Marmara region, Turkey

The Universal Soil-Loss Equation (USLE) predicts annual soil loss from agricultural uplands under specified land use and management conditions. Recently, some attempts have been made to apply USLE to forest lands in Turkey. This regional application of USLE and its reliability should be tested against measured data, especially for forest ecosystems. Our objective was to compute the cropping management (C) and the support practice (P) factors of the equation together in a single numerical value as a cover and management factor (CP) for forest and pseudo-maqui ecosystems using the local watershed and plot experiments carried out in the vicinity of Istanbul. CP factors were computed using known (rainfall erosivity factor, R) and estimated numerical values of other factors (average annual soil loss, A; soil-erodibility factor, K; combined slope-length and slope-steepness factor, LS). The CP factors were found to be 0.021 for old-growth oak-beech forest ecosystem in watershed-I and pseudo-maqui ecosystem and 0.011 for forest ecosystem in watershed-II.