School of Earth Sciences, The Ohio State University, 125 South Oval Mall, Columbus, OH, 43214, USA.
Sci Rep. 2021 Jan 13;11(1):885. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-79402-y.
Over half of the global population is projected to live in the tropics by 2050. Sustainable land development will be challenged by enhanced sediment erosion and deposition, which can negatively impact water quality and ecosystem services in inland and coastal waterways. Existing erosion assessments treat watersheds and coastal zones separately, but we connect them in a two-part vulnerability index to watershed erosion and coastal deposition at 0.0004° (~ 45 m) resolution throughout the tropics. We use open-source datasets and a simple, GIS-based method geared toward tropical, novice end-users. Part 1 of the index reveals a majority of the tropics is vulnerable to erosion. Vulnerability is highest where there are co-occurrences of earthquakes, steep slopes, and high precipitation such as the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. In Part 2, we assess erosion vulnerability at 4 watersheds and include their coastal systems, which can enhance or diminish vulnerability of the entire system to coastal deposition.
预计到 2050 年，全球一半以上的人口将居住在热带地区。随着泥沙侵蚀和沉积的加剧，可持续土地开发将面临挑战，这可能会对内陆和沿海水道的水质和生态系统服务产生负面影响。现有的侵蚀评估将流域和沿海地区分开处理，但我们在一个两部分的脆弱性指数中将它们连接起来，该指数以 0.0004°（约 45 米）的分辨率评估整个热带地区的流域侵蚀和沿海沉积的脆弱性。我们使用开源数据集和一种简单的、基于 GIS 的方法，面向热带地区的新手用户。指数的第一部分显示，大多数热带地区容易受到侵蚀。在地震、陡坡和高降水（如加勒比海和东南亚）同时发生的地方，脆弱性最高。在第二部分中，我们评估了 4 个流域及其沿海系统的侵蚀脆弱性，这些系统可以增强或降低整个系统对沿海沉积的脆弱性。
