2025/09/12 by Gashaw Sintayehu, Kefale Munye
#Erosion hotspot · GIS · MCDA · RUSLE · Temi watershed
paper · doi:10.20372/nadre:18283
The development of Ethiopia is greatly afected by soil erosion and land degradation, which are exacerbated by the rugged and steep slopes in the region. To address this issue, the GIS-based multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) model was utilized to map the erosion hotspots in the Temi watershed. The model took into account various factors such as land use, soil<br> type, topographic wetness index, potential gully locations, and stream power index. The weighted overlay tool of the ArcGIS Spatial Analyst Toolbox was employed to generate the soil erosion hotspot map, which was weighted using pairwise comparisons of the aforementioned factors. The results showed that 12.17% of the watershed was extremely sensitive to soil erosion, 65.7% was moderately sensitive, and 22.13% was slightly sensitive. The validation and feld observations revealed that MCDA outperformed the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) in terms of accuracy. The study also highlighted<br> that while the overall soil erosion risk in the Temi watershed was moderate, the cultivated bottomlands were particularly vulnerable. The fndings of this study can serve as a crucial resource for decision-makers in identifying vulnerable lands and implementing biophysically appropriate management practices for the Ethiopian highlands within the Temi watershed.<br>