Predicting soil detachment by raindrops

The process of soil erosion by water is modeled by mathematically linking the subprocesses of detachment, transport and deposition of sediments. A model is described that predicts the rate of soil detachment by multiple raindrops impacting on a bare soil surface. The model depends on parameters of a soil-strength-depenedent single-drop detachment model and a bivariate raindrop-size distribution function. The simulated data is analyzed to represent raindrop detachment rate as a linear and a nonlinear function of intensity. Equations that relate the parameters of soil detachment rate vs. intensity functions to the parameters of the single-drop detachment model are presented. -from Authors