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Abstract
Area of the Republic of Albania is characterized with high soil erosion rate. Each year nearly 60 million tons of sediments are deposited by Albanian rivers into the Adriatic Sea. Soil erosion and other associated pollution, are critical problems affecting the economic welfare, food security, and public health of Albania. In last decades, faster economic growth of the country and lack of soil resources, fresh water, forests etc., reinforce the need for soil protection and soil conservation. That increases the interest for erosion research, especially in the areas highly affected by soil erosion.
The objectives of this paper are to quantify the magnitude of soil erosion affected by climatic conditions to identify high-risk areas for immediate soil erosion control.
Keywords:Soil erosion, land use, rainfall factor.
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1. Introduction
Soil erosion especially from rainfall is a very important factor that affect negatively in soil degradation. Land and climatic conditions of our country, relatively steep relief and very steep relief, with vegetations that in most of surface is degraded or destroyed, are indicators that evidence for the presence of one strong erosion from rainfall everywhere and very aggressive [1] [9] [10] [11] [13] [14]. According to data from different Albanians authors levels of soil corrosion are 10-100 tons / ha / year and in some regions up to 520 tons / ha / year [11] [13] [14]. To evaluate erosion in Albanian territory and determining of areas affected from erosion are raised up four experimentally stations where are measured corrosion values of lands in standard conditions. Exploration and experimental work is performed in Kallmet (Lezha), Vithkuq (Korça), Radhima (Vlora) and Qaf - Shul (Librazhd). Their selection was made taking into account climatic and soil conditions. A very effective method in predicting soil erosion losses in function of climatic and soil conditions is using Universal Losing Soil Equation, that takes into account Erosion index (R), Erosion factor (K), Crop factor (C), The length and slope of the terrain (LS) and Management factor (P) [7] [15] [16]. According to this equation the assessment is made in tons / ha / year [2] [3].
Based on data on the amount of eroded land in experimentally stations, in meteorological data, in the ground characteristics of...