Remote sensing and GIS for land degradation assessment

Geographical Information Systems are powerful tools for modelling Earth surface phenomena at small scales. In particular in land degradation and soil erosion studies, they have proven useful for extending simulations from field scale to full catchment area scale. This paper reports on a study carried out for two years for Regione Siciliana in collaboration with the Sicilian Universities of Palermo, Messina and Catania. The widest catchment area in Sicily (4200 km2) was included in the study. Three different methods based on the analysis of satellite images and the application of models in a GIS environment were applied and compared for the analysis of soil erosion caused by water.