Dynamic Monitoring of Soil Erosion and Spatial Distribution in the Xiangxi River Watershed of Three Gorges Reservoir Area Based on Remote Sensing

In this paper, based on remote sensing data of 1999a and 2007a of the Xiangxi River watershed(XRW) and field investigation, changes of soil erosion and spatial distribution in the XRW has been studied through the GIS spatial overlay analysis of vegetation coverage, terrain slope and land use . The result indicated that the soil erosion area of the XRW reduced from 1999a to 2007a, the areas above moderate soil erosion decreased from 623.01 km
²
to 334.19 km
²
, occupied 20.73% and 11.12% of the total study area respectively. For spatial distribution, the slight soil erosion distributed extensively. The more serious region mainly distributed in two banks of the river with the proportion of the areas above moderate erosion reached to 46.03% and 25.45%. It should be gained more attention in the future.