Assessing soil erosion susceptibility in a tropical landscape: insights from a Brazilian case study

Abstract

Soil is a strategic resource essential for maintaining ecosystem services, an initiative closely linked to a country’s stage of development. In this sense, urgent strategies are required to mitigate the impacts of climate change on soil systems. This study aimed to assess the susceptibility to soil erosion as a means to support sustainable land-use planning in the municipality of Anápolis, presenting a highly disturbed landscape in Brazil. To achieve this, we applied the Information Value (IV) technique—a Bayesian statistical method based on frequency analysis—which quantifies the influence of various geoenvironmental factors on the probability of erosion occurrence by statistically evaluating their relationship with past erosion events. The results showed that approximately 50% of the municipality is highly susceptible to erosion, and for this reason, these areas should be prioritized by public authorities. The proposed geoenvironmental model demonstrated a satisfactory accuracy (~80%), confirming its effectiveness as a tool to enhance soil resilience.