Monitoring Soil Erosion and Reservoir Sedimentation in Semi-arid Region Through Remote Sensed SAR Data: A Case Study in Yatenga Region, Burkina Faso

Monitoring soil erosion and consequent reservoirs sedimentation is necessary for a proper planning of water and soil conservation measures. Applicability to large scale and cheapness of the monitoring system is crucial for low income countries. The present work proposes a novel approach in which remote sensed SAR and Landsat data are used for monitoring reservoir’s sedimentation and for mapping the soil erosion risk at catchment scale. Novel techniques for SAR imagery pre-processing are combined with empirical soil loss estimates. A SAR derived DEM is used to monitor the soil sedimentation rate of small reservoirs. The USLE (Universal Soil Loss Equation) method is used to draw a soil erosion risk map and to roughly estimate the total soil loss at catchment scale.