Abstract

BUENDIA-RODRIGUEZ, Enrique; ISLAS-GUTIERREZ, Fabián  and  GUERRA-DE LA CRUZ, Vidal. Soil Erosion Identification with Landsat ETM+ Images, in Tlaxco and Terrenate, Tlaxcala, Mexico. Terra Latinoam [online]. 2008, vol.26, n.1, pp.1-9. ISSN 2395-8030.

More than 67% of the State of Tlaxcala shows some level of soil erosion; however, no detailed map on the distribution of these areas is currently available, despite the need and interest in locating problem areas quickly and precisely. Data obtained by remote sensing are an alternative that provides reliable and low-cost information for this purpose. The objective of this study was to identify and quantify areas showing different soil erosion levels in the municipalities of Tlaxco and Terrenate, located in Northern Tlaxcala, with the satellite images Landsat ETM+, processed by Erdas© Imagine© 8.5 software. Three soil erosion levels were classified: severe erosion (ES), medium erosion (EM) and low erosion (EL) with 86.53% overall accuracy. The Kappa statistic was 78.15% (Khat coefficient 0.7815). Results indicate that the municipality of Tlaxco has a total of 3432 ha of eroded land, with 82.14, 8.39, and 9.46% corresponding to severe, medium, and low erosion levels, respectively. Terrenate municipality has a total of 1864 ha of eroded land, with 88.6, 6.08, and 5.30% corresponding to severe, medium, and low erosion levels, respectively.

Keywords : mapping; supervised classification; remote sensing.

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