International Soil and Water Conservation Research 7 (2019) 325e334

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International Soil and Water Conservation Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/iswcr

Original Research Article

Improving cover and management factor (C-factor) estimation using

remote sensing approaches for tropical regions
Andre
Almagro, Thais Caregnatto Thome
, Carina Barbosa Colman, Rodrigo Bahia Pereira,

Marcato Junior, Dulce Buchala Bicca Rodrigues, Paulo Tarso Sanches Oliveira*
Jose
Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, CxP 549, Campo Grande, MS, 79070-900, Brazil

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE)'s cover and management factor (C-factor) is one of the
Received 1 May 2019 most difficult factors to obtain, mainly because long-term monitoring soil erosion plots under natural
Received in revised form rainfall are needed. Therefore, remote sensing approaches have been used as an alternative for obtaining
5 August 2019
this factor. However, there is a lack of studies comparing values of this factor computed from remote
Accepted 16 August 2019
sensing approaches with measured data. In this study, we compare two widely used remote sensing
Available online 20 August 2019
approaches (CrA and CVK) to estimate the C-factor based on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
(NDVI) with the literature (CLIT) and field experimental data. We also investigated the influence of C-
Keywords:
Soil erosion
factor methods on the prediction of soil loss and sediment yield (SY) using measured data in the
RUSLE Guariroba basin, Central-West Brazil. We obtained mean C-factor values of 0.032, 0.023 and 0.137 for CLIT,
NDVI CrA and CVK, respectively. We found an average annual soil loss of 2.20 t ha
1 yr
1, 2.02 t ha
1 yr
1 and
Landsat 8 10.07 t ha
1 yr
1 and SY values of 6875 t yr
1, 6468 t yr
1 and 33,435 t yr1, for CLIT, CrA and CVK, respec-
Land use/land cover tively. Our results indicated a significant improvement in soil loss and SY estimations by using the CrA
approach developed for tropical regions, with a bias of 13% to the measured SY (5709 t yr
1). We
conclude that the CrA method present the most suitable alternative to compute soil loss and SY in tropical
regions. Furthermore, this approach allows large-scale evaluation and temporal monitoring, therefore
enhancing multi spatial and temporal assessment of soil erosion processes.
© 2019 International Research and Training Center on Erosion and Sedimentation and China Water and
Power Press. Production and Hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-
ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction
The Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) (Wischmeier & Smith,
1978) and its revised version (RUSLE) (Renard, Foster, Weesies,
McCool, & Yoder, 1997) are the most widely used models for esti-
mating long-term average annual soil loss and for soil and water
conservation planning (Kinnell, 2010). The RUSLE is composed of
six factors: rainfall erosivity e R, soil erodibility e K, slope length e
L, slope steepness e S, cover and management e C, and conserva-
tion practices e P. Among these factors, the cover and management
(C-factor) is one of the most spatiotemporal sensitive as it follows
* Corresponding author. Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, Campo Grande,
MS, Brazil.
E-mail addresses: andre.almagro@gmail.com (A. Almagro), thaisthome04@

), carinabcolman@gmail.com (C.B. Colman), rodrigoeamb@
gmail.com (T.C. Thome
gmail.com (R.B. Pereira), jrmarcato@gmail.com (J. Marcato Junior), dulcebbr@
gmail.com (D.B.B. Rodrigues), paulotarsoms@gmail.com, paulo.t.oliveira@ufms.br
(P.T.S. Oliveira).
plant growth and rainfall dynamics (Nearing et al., 2005). This
factor is defined as a non-dimensional number between zero and
one that represents a rainfall erosivity-weighted ratio of soil loss
from land under specified, vegetated conditions to the corre-
sponding loss from continuous bare fallow (Oliveira et al., 2015b;
Wischmeier & Smith, 1978).
For computing the C-factor is necessary to use experimental soil
erosion plots under natural rainfall, however these studies are
expensive and time-consuming (Nearing et al., 2000). In many
countries, available measured data in experimental plots are scarce
or inexistent (Morgan, 2005), therefore several authors have used
the C-factor developed for the United State of America (Dissmeyer,
George E., Foster, 1981; Wischmeier & Smith, 1978) to map soil
erosion, by using geographic information systems (Ganasri &
Ramesh, 2016; Oliveira, Alves Sobrinho, Rodrigues, & Panachuki,
2011). However, this approach produces uncertainties and may
affect the quality of soil erosion predictions (Oliveira et al., 2015b).
Another widely used approach to estimate the C-factor is based on

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326 A. Almagro et al. / International Soil and Water Conservation Research 7 (2019) 325e334
the use of remotely sensed data (Borrelli, Meusburger, Ballabio,
Panagos, & Alewell, 2018; Durigon, Carvalho, Antunes, Oliveira, &
Fernandes, 2014; Panagos et al., 2015; Schmidt, Alewell, &
Meusburger, 2018; Vrieling, 2006; Zhang, Xie, Liu, & Lu, 2011). In
general, the estimated C-factor values from remote sensing data
have not been compared with C-factor values obtained from
measured data and, therefore, may also generate uncertainties
concerning soil erosion predictions (Oliveira et al., 2015b).
To determine the C-factor by remote sensing, have been often
used vegetation indices such as the Normalized Difference Vegeta-
tion Index (NDVI) (Durigon et al., 2014; Lunetta, Knight,
Ediriwickrema, Lyon, & Worthy, 2006). Usually, NDVI is directly
correlated to the C-factor by a linear (Durigon et al., 2014; Lin, Lin, &
Chou, 2002) or exponential regression (van der Knijff, Jones, &
Montanarella, 1999). C-factor mapping by remote sensing can pro-
vide suitable information for improving the spatial and temporal
€nninger,
modeling of soil erosion (Borrelli et al., 2018; Meusburger, Ba
& Alewell, 2010). In addition, this approach enables researchers to
compare soil loss estimates (Ostovari, Ghorbani-Dashtaki, Bahrami,
Naderi, & Dematte, 2017) and sediment yield (Zhou & Wu, 2008) in
which values of soil erosion and sediment delivery were obtained
from experimental data (Didone
, Minella, & Merten, 2015).
The NDVI was used to evaluate the impact of land-use and land-
cover changes on soil erosion in a developing area in China (Li,
Wang, & Liu, 2014). Scho € nbrodt, Saumer, Behrens, Seeber, and
Scholten (2010) used a derivation of the NDVI, the fractional
vegetation cover (FVC), to estimate the C-factor for a large moun-
tainous area from the Yangtze River catchment in China and
concluded that the method does not generate reliable values when
compared with literature values of the C-Factor. Moreover, Schmidt
et al. (2018), the state-of-the-art remote sensing products and the
fractional green vegetation cover (FGVC) to calculate the C-factor
for grasslands in combination with rainfall dynamics in
Switzerland. Tanyas, Kolat, and Lütfi Süzen (2015) developed a new
approach for obtaining the C-factor from remote sensing and found
suitable results, despite to highlighted concerns with some unusual
C-factor values found for pasture and forest. The authors also have
estimated the sediment yield for a reservoir, but they do not have
compared their results with measured values. Jain and Das (2010)
investigated the use of NDVI and literature values of C-factor to
estimate the sediment yield in an Indian catchment and found
biases of 40%. Durigon et al. (2014) developed an equation for
obtaining the C-factor by using NDVI rescaling in tropical regions.
However, the authors did not evaluate their results against C-factor
values obtained in field experiments. The application of methods
based on NDVI to estimate the C-factor is especially important in
tropical regions, such as Brazil. The annual and interannual climatic
variability over Brazil are directly connected with the vegetation
cover over the seasons (Gurgel & Ferreira, 2010). The traditional
method (using a constant C-factor found in the literature) is not
able to capture the spatial and temporal variation over a year such
as has been possible by using the NDVI approaches.
In this context, the aim of this study is to compare two widely
used remote sensing approaches to estimate the C-factor based on
the NDVI (Durigon et al., 2014; van der Knijff et al., 1999) with the
literature and measured data. We also investigated the influence of
these approaches on the RUSLE soil loss and sediment yield esti-
mations comparing then to measured field data in a tropical
watershed located in Central-West Brazil.
2. Material and methods
2.1. Study area and delineation
This study was developed in the environmental protection area
of the Guariroba basin, with an area of ~360 km2, located in Campo
Grande, Central-West Brazil, in the Cerrado biome (Fig. 1). This
basin is crucial for Campo Grande as it is the main water supply
source, providing about 40% of the water consumed in the urban
area (Sone et al., 2019). According to the Ko €ppen climate classifi-
cation, the predominant climate is Aw, tropical savanna (Peel,
Finlayson, & McMahon, 2007). The summer is hot and rainy
(October through March) and winter is dry (April through March).
The mean annual rainfall and temperature are 1500 mm and 23  C,
respectively. The soil is classified in the Brazilian soil classification
system (SiBCS) as (% of total basin area): Orthic Quartzarenic Neosol
- RQo with sandy texture (94.1%); Dystrophic Red Latosol - LVd with
sandy loam texture (2.4%); and Hydromorphic Quartzarenic Neosol
e RQg with sandy texture (3.5%). The basin is composed by (% of
total basin area): pastures (74.3%); eucalyptus (6.1%); undisturbed
cerrado vegetation (Brazilian savanna) (14.4%); riparian zones
(3.2%); and scarce vegetation areas (1.3%).
The study was delineated to first obtain the cover and man-
agement factor (C-factor) from three methods and then to compute
the average annual soil loss from the RUSLE equation. Therefore,
using the average annual soil loss resulting from the different
values of the C-factor approaches, three values of the sediment
yield (SY) were estimated. Then, to verify which methodology for
obtaining the C-factor is more suitable for sediment yield estima-
tions, we compared these estimation values to the measured
sediment yield from a monitored section in the Guariroba basin
(see Fig. 2).
2.2. Cover and management (C-factor)
In this study, we used the C-factor values obtained from the
literature (Section 2.2.1) and the C-factor derived from remote
sensing approaches (Section 2.2.2). We used Landsat 8 Operational
Land Imager (OLI) sensor data with 30-m spatial resolution through
two equations.
2.2.1. C-factor from literature values
We attributed C-factors obtained from long-term monitoring of
soil erosion plots under natural rainfall to the land cover and land
use (LCLU) map of the Guariroba basin, which is the most widely
used approach worldwide to set the RUSLE model (Borrelli et al.,
2018; Oliveira et al., 2011; Zare, Panagopoulos, & Loures, 2017).
The C-factor values were taken from the study by Oliveira et al.
(2015b), which provide benchmark values useful to evaluate soil
erosion models in Brazil. The LCLU map was obtained by inter-
preting and classifying the 1-m spatial resolution IKONOS satellite
image from 2013. We referred to this approach throughout the text
as CLIT and the values are 0.013 for cerrado vegetation, 0.020 for
pasture, 0.030 for Eucalyptus and 1 for bare soil.
2.2.2. C-factor from remote sensing approaches
To determine the C-factor from remote sensing data, we used
two methods widely used methods based on the Normalized Dif-
ference Vegetation Index (NDVI), due their facility of application
and processing, and the high availability of the data input. The NDVI
is a widely used indicator of green vegetation vigor by the calcu-
lation of the spectral reflectance difference between red and near-
infrared bands of the satellite image (Tucker, 1979) (Equation (1))
and ranges from
1 to þ1, with the highest values attributed to
areas with greater vegetation cover.


NIR
RED
NDVI ¼ (1)
NIR þ RED
where NIR is the surface spectral reflectance in the near-infrared
 A. Almagro et al. / International Soil and Water Conservation Research 7 (2019) 325e334 327

Fig. 1. Location of the study area in the Brazilian context (a). Most of the relief is flat (b) and there are six main land uses (c) in the Guariroba basin.

Fig. 2. Flowchart summarizing the methodology adopted in this study.

band and RED is the surface spectral reflectance in the red band.
The first method used to estimate the C-factor was proposed by

NDVI
Durigon et al. (2014) and adapted by Colman (2018) (CrA), and the CVK ¼ exp
a (3)
second by van der Knijff et al. (1999) (CVK). The CrA and CVK are ðb
NDVIÞ
calculated following Equations (2) and (3), respectively.
where Cr and CVK are the estimated C-factors; a and b are param-

 eters related to the shape of the curve that associates NDVI with the

NDVI þ 1
CrA ¼ 0:1 (2) C-factor.
2
The CrA is based on NDVI rescaling under tropical climate con-
ditions, with more intense rainfall. In relation to CVK, van der Knijff,
328 A. Almagro et al. / International Soil and Water Conservation Research 7 (2019) 325e334

Jones, and Montanarella (2000) concluded that for European estimating the K-factor in the studied basin, with coefficient of
climate conditions, values 2 and 1 are the best representatives of correlation of 97% between estimations and measured values.
equation parameters a and b, respectively. Colman (2018) per-
formed comparisons between the C-factor computed using remote 2.5. Topographic factor (LS-factor)
sensing approaches and experimental field studies (Oliveira et al.,
2015b) and found a tenfold systematic bias for the method devel- We computed the LS-factor using a Digital Elevation Model
oped by Durigon et al. (2014) and recommended an adjustment (DEM) from IKONOS imagery (1-m rescaled to 10-m). Within the
factor of 0.1 for CrA output, in order to minimize the biases. This GISus-M system, the LS factor is calculated using the LS-TOOL
adapted approach was also used by Sone et al. (2019) that found developed by Zhang et al. (2013). The LS-factor is computed for
suitable C-factor values. Therefore, in the present study we used the each DEM's pixel, where the L factor is expressed as the Desmet and
adapted approach by Colman (2018). Govers (1996) equation:
To obtain the NDVI used in the two remote sensing approaches, 
we used Landsat 8 OLI surface reflectance imagery and performed a
mþ1  mþ1
Aij þ D2
Aij
in
temporal analysis from 2013 to 2016. For each year, four images
Lij
in ¼     (4)
were obtained to represent rainy and dry periods (Table 1) from the
Dmþ2  xm ij
 ð22:13Þm
Earth Explorer (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/).
We used Landsat 8 OLI surface reflectance orthorectified images,
which present high positional accuracy (Irons, Dwyer, & Barsi, where Lij
in is the slope length for grid cell (i,j); Aij
in is the
2012; Roy et al., 2014; Storey, Choate, & Lee, 2014). We computed contributing area at the inlet of the grid cell with coordinates (i,j), in
NDVI using these atmospheric corrected images, following rec- m2; D is the grid cell size, in m; m is the length exponent of the USLE
ommendations suggested by Song, Woodcock, Seto, Lenney, and L-factor; xij is the equation (sinai;j þ cosai;j ).
Macomber (2001) and Agapiou, Hadjimitsis, Papoutsa, Alexakis, In the RUSLE,m varies according to the ratio of the rill and inter-
and Papadavid (2011), who concluded that uncorrected atmo- rill erosion (b) according to McCool, Foster, Mutchler, and Meyer
spheric effects can impact up to 50% the results of NDVI (1989) (Equations (5) and (6)):
calculations.
m ¼ b=ð1 þ bÞ (5)

2.3. Rainfall erosivity (R-factor) where b varies according to the slope gradient.
The b value is obtained by:
We used the rainfall erosivity map developed by Oliveira,

h
sin q i
Rodrigues, Alves Sobrinho, Carvalho, and Panachuki (2012),
b¼ 3ðsin qÞ0:8 þ 0:56 (6)
where the authors used data more than 100 rain gauges and or- 0:0896
dinary kriging to generate the rainfall erosivity values across the
The slope steepness (S) was calculated following McCool,
Mato Grosso do Sul State. The R-factor for the municipality of
Brown, Foster, Mutchler, and Meyer (1987) (Equations (7) and (8)).
Campo Grande, MS ranged from 8000 to 10,000 MJ mm ha
1 h
1
yr
1.
S ¼ 10:8 sin q þ 0:03 if q < 9% (7)

2.4. Soil erodibility (K-factor)

S ¼ 16:8 sin q
0:50 if q  9% (8)
The K-factor was obtained from a previous study developed in where q is the slope in degrees.
the Guariroba basin by Anache, Bacchi, Panachuki, and Sobrinho
(2015), whom carried out soil samples throughout this basin to
2.6. Support practice factor (P-factor)
obtain soil characteristics, such as soil texture, permeability,
structure, and organic matter. Then the authors computed the K-
For the P-factor, we used an 1-m resolution Ikonos satellite
factor from different equations and found that the equation pro-
image and field reports from the Campo Grande City Hall to
posed by Sharpley and Williams (1990) was the most suitable for
manually delimit the practices already used in the study area,
following the values suggested by Wischmeier and Smith (1978) for
Table 1 slopes ranging from 3% to 5% as the mean slope for Guariroba basin
Information and characteristics of the satellite imagery used to obtain C-factors from is 3.75%. (Table 2).
remote sensing approaches.

Satellite Instrument Path/row Date Season 2.7. Soil loss estimation

Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 31/05/2013 Rainy
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 18/07/2013 Dry We used the GISus-M plug-in integrated to ArcGIS Desktop 10.2
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 03/08/2013 Dry version (Oliveira et al., 2015a). This plug-in is based on the RUSLE
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 06/10/2013 Rainy
model (Renard et al., 1997), which calculates average annual soil
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 11/02/2014 Rainy
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 21/07/2014 Dry
loss according to Equation (9).
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 22/08/2014 Dry
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 09/10/2014 Rainy
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 19/04/2015 Rainy Table 2
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 22/06/2015 Dry Conservation practice factors.
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 09/08/2015 Dry
Soil management P-factor
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 13/11/2015 Rainy
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 05/04/2016 Rainy Without practice 1
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 10/07/2016 Dry Leveled tracks 0.5
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 27/08/2016 Dry Cordons of permanent vegetation 0.25
Landsat 8 OLI 224/74 30/10/2016 Rainy Terrace 0.1
 A. Almagro et al. / International Soil and Water Conservation Research 7 (2019) 325e334
A ¼ R: K:LS:C:P
where A is the average annual soil loss, in t ha
1 yr
1; R is the
rainfall erosivity factor, in MJ mm ha
1 h
1 yr
1; K is the soil
erodibility factor, in t ha h ha
1 MJ
1 mm
1; LS is the topographic
factor (dimensionless), C is the cover management factor (dimen-
sionless), and P is the conservation practice factor (dimensionless).
For the soil loss estimation, we multiplied the RUSLE's factors (R,
K, LS, and P) by the C-factors obtained from three different ap-
proaches. Thus, three combinations of soil loss estimation were
generated and then we investigate the influence of these values on
the sediment yield estimations against the measured value from
the monitored section. The average annual soil loss was computed
for a spatial resolution of 30-m, because this is the coarsest spatial
resolution used in our input data (Landsat images used to compute
the C-factor).
2.8. Sediment monitoring
The Guariroba basin has monthly hydro-sedimentological
measurements of water and sediment discharge carried out from
September 2011 to July 2017 (see Fig. 3). We first obtained
streamflow values by using water levels that were recorded every
10 min using a pressure transducer sensor (Levelogger Junior Edge
model 3001 LT, Solinst). These data were compared using a me-
chanical current meter method, which was performed every 30
Fig. 3. Hydro-sedimentological monitoring in the Guariroba basin. (a) aerial view of the monitoring section from IKONOS satellite imagery; (b) general view of the field work on the
section; (c) underwater view of the sediment transport; (d) water discharge measurement for the calibration of the rating curve; and e. Sediment discharge measurement using
vertical integration method.
329
days. Then, streamflow was computed by a rating curve, whose
(9) parameters were optimized. The suspended load samplings were
obtained for vertical integration using the Equal Width Increment
(EWI) techniques according to Equation (10).
Qss ¼ 0:0864  Qw  Cs (10)
whereQss is the suspended-sediment (SS) discharge in t d
1;Qw is
the water discharge in m3 s
1; andCs is the mean concentration of
SS in the cross-section in mg l
1.
Sediment Yield (SY) values were calculated using the discharge-
weighted mean sediment concentration (Equation (11)) according
to Ladegaard-Pedersen et al. (2017). This methodology is widely
used to compare annual or seasonal variability of concentrations in
a specific river. The authors also state that this method is used to
estimate the annual flows of suspended sediment.
Pn
ðci ti qi Þ
SYmsd ¼ Qa Pi¼1
n (11)
i¼1 ðti qi Þ
where SYmsd is the annual sediment yield, in t yr
1; Qa is the mean
annual flow, in mio. m3; ci is the suspended sediment concentration
(SSC), in mg l
1; qi is the discharge at time i, in m3 s
1; and ti is the
time interval in which the ith sample represents the river SSC, in
days.
330 A. Almagro et al. / International Soil and Water Conservation Research 7 (2019) 325e334

2.9. Sediment delivery ratio (SDR)

SDR ¼ 0:627  D0:403 (13)
From the soil loss values computed by the RUSLE, we estimate
the sediment yield (SY) based on the Sediment Delivery Ratio (SDR) where D is the slope of the main channel, in %.
model (Equation (12)).

SY ¼ SDR:A (12) 3. Results and discussion

where SY is the sediment yield, in t yr
1; SDR is the sediment de-
livery ratio, dimensionless; and A is the mean annual soil loss
estimated, in t ha
1 yr
1.
Colman et al. (2018) evaluated five methods that use morpho-
metric characteristics of a watershed to estimate the SDR. They
concluded that the equation proposed by Williams and Berndt
(1972) (Equation (13)) is the most suitable to estimate the sedi-
ment delivery ratio for the Guariroba basin, with a percent bias
ranging from
2.34% to 3.30%. Therefore, we used Equation (13)
following Colman et al. (2018).
3.1. C-factor estimations by traditional and remote sensing
approaches
Comparing C-factor values from the literature (traditional
method) with those obtained from remote sensing derived from
NDVI, CVK showed higher overestimations for the mean value of the
entire Guariroba basin, and land covers of cerrado, pasture and
Eucalyptus than CrA (see Table 3). For the bare soil, both methods
produced similar underestimations up to 97% for Cr and CVK. These
results show the difficulty of methods that use NDVI as input to

Table 3
Classes of land cover and their respective mean C-factor and standard deviation.

Land cover Area (ha) CLIT (Oliveira, Wendland, & Nearing, 2013) CrA CVK

Value PBIAS Value PBIAS

Cerrado 5313 0.013 0.014 ± 0.004 8% 0.028 ± 0.048 115%

Pasture 26,887 0.020 0.025 ± 0.004 25% 0.164 ± 0.068 720%
Eucalyptus 2211 0.030 0.012 ± 0.005
60% 0.027 ± 0.036
10%
Bare soil 478 1.000 0.033 ± 0.004
97% 0.370 ± 0.135
63%
Average for the entire basin 36,000 0.032 0.023 ± 0.007
28% 0.137 ± 0.099 328%

Fig. 4. Mean NDVI (a) during the 2012e2016 period and different approaches to determine the RUSLE's C-factor as CLIT (b), CrA (c) and CVK (d).
 A. Almagro et al. / International Soil and Water Conservation Research 7 (2019) 325e334
estimate the C-factor in areas under bare soil. This was expected,
once these methods are strictly dependent on the biomass spectral
response captured by satellite sensors. The only case that CVK per-
formed better than the CrA method was for the Eucalyptus cover.
This fact can be related to the greater similarity in height and fo-
liage of Eucalyptus to the European forests, for which the method
was developed.
As the C-factor is one of the determining variables of the RUSLE,
the bias presented in the remote sensing approaches will be carried
out for any later prediction of soil loss and sediment yield esti-
mation. On the other hand, the CrA values presented more coher-
ence compared with the values found in the literature, especially
for the undisturbed cerrado vegetation, which makes the soil loss
estimations for the Cerrado biome in Brazil more reliable. Fig. 4
shows the spatial distribution of C-factor values obtained from
the literature and by remote sensing for the Guariroba basin. The
average and standard deviation values of CrA and CVK are
0.023 ± 0.007 and 0.137 ± 0.099, respectively.
For most land use classes, CVK was not suitable to determine the
C-factor, presenting greater values than those from experimental
fields. This can be explained by the fact that van der Knijff et al.
(1999) estimated the monthly C-factor based on NDVI aggregates
every 10 days and then calibrated the parameters for Italy, which
has different climate and vegetation characteristics from our study
area. The application proposed by the van der Knijff et al. (1999)
equation using values of 2 and 1 for a and b parameters, respec-
tively, were not suitable to be used in the Guariroba basin. Similarly,
Oliveira et al. (2015a) found values of CVK smaller than Cr, and
standard deviations greater than the mean, considering the Cr
Fig. 5. Spatial distribution of the (a) R-factor; (b) K-factor; (c) LS-factor; and (d) P-factor in the Guariroba basin.
331
method more accurate for a tropical basin in the Brazilian Atlantic
Forest.
Concerning the development of the Durigon et al. (2014)
equation, 22 Landsat-5 images from 1986 to 2009 were used for
calculating the cover management factor (Cr-factor) of the RUSLE
model. The mean values found by Durigon et al. (2014) and van der
Knijff et al. (1999) ranged from 0.084 to 0.228 and 0.003 to 0.065,
respectively. In general, studies carried out in tropical basins that,
show results of the european model smaller than the tropical one,
such as Oliveira et al. (2015a). When the values of NDVI based
methods are compared with the most used equations to estimate
the C-factor, these values also indicate overestimation in relation to
the traditional methods (Vatandaşlar & Yavuz, 2017).
3.2. Soil loss and sediment yield estimation
The R-factor varied within the range from 8932 to 9112 with an
average of 9042 ± 30.29 MJ mm ha
1 h
1 yr
1 (Fig. 5a). These
values are consistent with those reported by other authors for the
same region (Almagro, Oliveira, Nearing, & Hagemann, 2017;
Oliveira et al., 2013; Trindade, de Oliveira, Anache, & Wendland,
2016) and are classified as very high in the global context
(Panagos et al., 2017). The estimated K-factor is of 0.039 ± 0.017 t h
MJ
1 mm
1 for orthic Quartzarenic Neosols (RQo) and hydromor-
phic Quartzarenic Neosols, and 0.028 ± 0.017 t h MJ
1 mm
1 for the
dystrophic Red Latosol (Fig. 5b). The spatial variation of the com-
bined LS-factor in the basin is presented in Fig. 5c. The mean LS-
factor is 0.29 and the highest values are found near water bodies.
The increase in the topographic factor is related to higher rates of
332 A. Almagro et al. / International Soil and Water Conservation Research 7 (2019) 325e334

Table 4
Mean values for the RUSLE's factors for the contributing area of the monitoring section.

RUSLE's factor Min Max Mean

Erosivity R 8932 9087 9038

Erodibility K 0.028 0.039 0.039
Topographic LS 0.01 49.18 0.95
Conservation practices P 0.1 1.0 0.7
Cover and management CLIT 0.000 0.100 0.032
CrA 0.004 0.078 0.023
CVK 0.000 1.000 0.137

runoff and erosion (Oliveira et al., 2013). Fig. 5d shows the distri-
bution of existing conservation practices at the study site. The P
factor has an average of 0.69 ± 0.39. Table 4 shows the mean value
of each RUSLE's factor for the contributing area of the monitoring
section.
The mean and standard deviation values of soil loss using CrA
and CVK are 2.02 ± 5.70 and 10.07 ± 36,58 t ha
1 yr
1, respectively
(Fig. 6b and c). The mean soil loss calculated using the C-factor
obtained from the literature is 2.20 ± 19.85 t ha
1 yr
1 (Fig. 6a).
These values indicate slight soil erosion for Clit and CrA and mod-
erate soil erosion for CVK. However, we observed that the three
methods present a spatial relationship of soil losses, which occur
more intensely near water bodies, making it possible to identify
vulnerable areas and allowing decision makers to define priority
areas.
The SDR calculated using Williams and Berndt's (1972) equation
is 10.54%, which indicates that about 11% of the soil loss occurred in
the basin reaches the monitoring section. With the results from soil
loss and the measured annual water discharge of 5.78 m3 s
1, we
estimated the sediment yield (SY) for the different approaches. The
SY values were 6875 t yr
1, 6468 t yr
1 and 33,435 t yr1, for CLIT, CrA
and CVK, respectively (Table 5). According to Singh, Babu, Narain,
Bhushan, and Abrol (1992), these values are classified as moder-
ate and severe. Comparing these results with the average annual SY
measured in the Guariroba basin, which is about 5709 t yr
1, the
closest estimation is the one associated to the C-factor obtained
using the CrA method (Table 4).
Among the values presented in Table 4, the highest percentage
deviation (486%) is the estimate of SY derived from the CVK, fol-
lowed by deviations from the Clit (20%) and CrA (13%). According to
Pandey, Chowdary, and Mal (2007), a level of 20% of deviation may
be considered “acceptable”, therefore, the SY associated to the C-
factor obtained from the literature and CrA is considered “accept-
able”. The estimate of SY from the CVK resulted in a high

Fig. 6. Annual average soil loss for the Guariroba basin using different approaches to determine the C-factor: (a) Clit; (b) CrA; and (c) CVK.
 A. Almagro et al. / International Soil and Water Conservation Research 7 (2019) 325e334
Table 5
Annual soil erosion and sediment yield for Guariroba basin. The sediment yield was estimated using the C-factor from the literature and remote sensing approaches.
SY measured (t yr
1) C-factor method
5709 CLIT
CrA
CVK
overestimation that makes this method unsuitable for determining
the C-factor in our study area. As discussed before, this is relative to
the a and b parameters that were adjusted for European conditions.
Our findings indicate that Clit and CrA methods are suitable to
estimate both soil erosion and sediment yield in a tropical basin,
such as the Guariroba basin. However, it is important to note that
although the Clit has shown “acceptable” results, it generates a
static value of the C-factor, ignoring the dynamics of the land use
components (Borrelli et al., 2018). Furthermore, there is a lack of
the literature C-factor data for many parts of the world (Oliveira
et al., 2015b). Therefore, methods that use remote sensing ap-
proaches appear as an alternative to minimize this problem. The
satellite imagery used in the present investigation is freely avail-
able, showing adequate spatial-temporal resolution for the
addressed application, making it possible to estimate the C-factor,
soil loss and sediment yield on different scales e basin, continental
and global e for ungauged areas.
4. Conclusions
In this study, we compared three different methods to obtain
the cover and management factor (C-factor) from the RUSLE, as
follows: from the literature values (Clit) and from remote sensing
approaches based on NDVI according to the CrA and CVK equations.
We also evaluated the influence of these approaches on the RUSLE
soil loss and sediment yield estimations comparing them to
measured field data in the Guariroba basin, Central-West Brazil.
The CrA equation presented similar (percent bias of
28%) C-
factor values to those obtained from the soil erosion experimental
plots, while the CVK was not capable to well estimate them (percent
bias of 328%). When compared with the measured sediment yield
(5709 t yr-1), the CLIT, CrA and CVK equations showed a percent bias
of 20%, 13% and 486%, respectively. Our findings indicated that the
CVK equation was not suitable to be used in the Guariroba basin.
Therefore, this equation should be used with caution in other
tropical areas, and preferably after evaluating the performance
using local/regional literature data obtained from soil erosion
experimental plots.
We conclude that the CrA method present the most suitable
alternative to compute soil loss and SY in tropical regions.
Furthermore, this approach allows large-scale evaluation and
temporal monitoring, therefore enhancing multi spatial and tem-
poral assessment of soil erosion processes. Our findings may be also
useful for soil and water conservation planning and for estimating
soil loss and sediment yield considering different remote sensing
approaches to determine the cover and management factor,
enhancing the evaluation of large areas and the temporal moni-
toring of the soil erosion processes.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Ministry of Science, Technol-
ogy, Innovation and Communication-MCTIC and National Council
for Scientific and Technological Development-CNPq [grant
numbers 441289/2017-7 and 306830/2017-5]. We would also like
to thank the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education
333
Soil loss (t ha
1 yr
1) SY estimated (t yr
1) SY bias
2.20 6875 20%
2.01 6468 13%
10.70 33,435 486%
Personnel - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001 and CAPES PrInt.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iswcr.2019.08.005.
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