XU Pei1,2* and FU Bin1,2
(1 Key Laboratory of Mountain Surface Process and Hazards, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China
2 Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China)
Abstract Rainfall runoff is a critical hydrological process related to soil erosion and agricultural non-point pollution. In this study, 25 simulation experiments on rainfall were carried out in five runoff plots. Rape (Brassica campestris) was planted on the downslope of the plots. Experiments were conducted when the vegetation coverage reached 80%. Each plot was subjected to five rainfall events differing in intensity. The results showed: (1) the runoff coefficients of overland flow and subsurface flow were less than 0.6 and 0.005, respectively; (2) the discharge of overland flow was the quadratic function of time; (3) runoff coefficient was the function of slope gradient and rainfall intensity. When the slope gradient increased from 8.7% to 46.6%, the runoff coefficient of overland flow first increased and then decreased. The runoff coefficient reached the maximum when the slope gradient was within the range of 17.6%–36.4%; and (4) the process of subsurface flow generation included the increasing phase and recession phase. Discharge was a logarithm function of time in the increasing phase, and an exponential function in the recession phase. Runoff coefficient of subsurface flow decreased first and then increased when the slope gradient varied from 8.7% to 46.6% and was not correlated with rainfall intensity.
Key words purple soil; sloping cropland; rainfall simulation; overland flow; subsurface flow
* Corresponding author, E-mail: xupei@imde.ac.cn
CHINESE JOURNAL OF GEOCHEMISTRY Vol. 30, No. 3, 2011, page 317-312
© Science Press and Institute of Geochemistry, CAS and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
