Abstract:

Soil erosion is one of the main contributing factors to decreases in soil fertility and is widely
recognized as a threat to farm livelihoods and ecosystem integrity worldwide. Soil erosion is
broadly categorized into; natural/geologic/normal erosion and accelerated erosion. Soil erosion
begins with detachment, which is caused by breakdown of aggregates by raindrop impact,
sheering or drag force of water and wind. Detached particles are transported by flowing water
or wind and deposited when the velocity of water or wind decreases by the effect of slope or
ground cover (Ismail et al., 2008). There are different types of soil erosion like; rainwater
erosion (splash erosion, sheet erosion, hill erosion and gulley erosion), landslide erosion
(earthquakes, heavy rainfall), stream bank erosion (torrential rains in hilly areas causes flooding
of rivers and streams causing large scale erosion throughout the stream banks), seashore
erosion (due to turbulent waves in the sea during monsoons) and wind erosion (common in
low rainfall areas, mainly due to strong winds) (Onyando et al., 2005).
The main problem caused by soil erosion is risk to food security (Sthiannopkao et al., 2007;
Zhou et al., 2008; Bewket and Teferi, 2009; Wang et al., 2009). While food crop production is a
major livelihood activity undertaken by 98.7% of the population in West Nile (Abi ZARDI, 2015),
soil macro-nutrients levels in the region is on the decline due to farming practices and methods
that are counter-productive to soil fertility management (Odama et al, 2013).The reduction in
soil fertility has been attributed to accelerated soil erosion especially in ragged terrain landscape
of the region in the southern districts of Zombo and Nebbi. Evidence for this is very clear in the
upslope areas of Zombo district where decline of the fertility of their soils (Abi ZARDI, 2015)
and consequential low yield of crops (Awori and Odama, 2014) yet the percentage of farmers
using inorganic fertilizers to improve soil fertility for food crop production is still very low
(0.5%) (Odama et al., 2013).
The main objective of this study was To determine selected soil physical and chemical properties
and extent of soil erosion in West Nile region so as to guide informed decisions on soil and
water conservation management practices.The following specific obejctives guided this study:
To determine selected physical and chemical soil properties in West Nile region To develop soil erosion hazard map and predict long-term average annual rate of erosion
prone areas in West Nile region
To assess the perceived efficiency of soil and water conservation management practices
To achieve the above mentioned objectives, the following methodology was adopted: