Estimation of soil loss due to erosion in the Tecocomulco wetland basin, Mexico

Abstract

The basin of the Tecocomulco lagoon is in the southwest of the state of Hidalgo, encompassing part of the states of Puebla and Tlaxcala. It was designated a RAMSAR site in 2003 by the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. The water resource of the Tecocomulco wetland is compromised by social and ecological uses and the real loss of the storage volume of the lagoon due to deforestation, causing an increase in soil erosion in the upper part of the basin, causing flooding, low yields in agricultural and livestock production, degradation of plant cover and loss of biodiversity. The objective was estimating the level of erosion in the Tecocomulco wetland, to justify the criteria to categorize it as a priority area for restoration and conservation. The evaluation of the degree of hydric erosion was carried out based on the methodology proposed by Figueroa (1991), which uses the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), to estimate and predict average annual soil losses. To obtain statistics by erosion range according to the FAO (1984), the resulting map was classified into three ranges and subsequently statistical zoning was carried out to obtain the values. The results showed that 1,075,167.31 tons of soil loss per year were obtained, the most representative range or class of erosion on the surface corresponds to "no or slight Erosion" that occupies 39.22% of the total surface of the basin.