water Article Soil Erosion Assessment Using the RUSLE Model and Geospatial Techniques (Remote Sensing and GIS) in South-Central Niger (Maradi Region) Mohamed Adou Sidi Almouctar 1,2 , Yiping Wu 1,2, * , Fubo Zhao 1,2 and Jacqueline Fifame Dossou 1   Citation: Sidi Almouctar, M.A.; Wu, Y.; Zhao, F.; Dossou, J.F. Soil Erosion Assessment Using the RUSLE Model and Geospatial Techniques (Remote Sensing and GIS) in South-Central Niger (Maradi Region). Water 2021, 13, 3511. https://doi.org/10.3390/ w13243511 Academic Editors: Mirko Castellini and František Petroviˇ c Received: 30 September 2021 Accepted: 1 December 2021 Published: 9 December 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Technology Innovation Center for Land Engineering and Human Settlements, Shaanxi Land Engineering Construction Group Co., Ltd., Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China; sidialmoctarp@gmail.com (M.A.S.A.); zfubo789@163.com (F.Z.); dofiline@yahoo.fr (J.F.D.) 2 Department of Earth and Environmental Science, School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China * Correspondence: yipingwu@xjtu.edu.cn; Tel.: +86-186-8182-6576 Abstract: A systematic method, incorporating the revised universal soil loss equation model (RUSLE), remote sensing, and the geographic information system (GIS), was used to estimate soil erosion potential and potential area in the Maradi region of south-central Niger. The spatial trend of seasonal soil erosion was obtained by integrating remote sensing environmental variables into a grid-based GIS method. RUSLE is the most commonly used method for estimating soil erosion, and its input variables, such as rainfall erosivity, soil erodibility, slope length and steepness, cover management, and conservation practices, vary greatly over space. These factors were calculated to determine their influence on average soil erosion in the region. An estimated potential mean annual soil loss of 472.4 t/ac/year, based on RUSLE, was determined for the study area. The potential erosion rates varied from 14.8 to 944.9 t/ac/year. The most eroded areas were identified in central and west- southern areas, with erosion rates ranging from 237.1 to 944.9 t/ac/year. The spatial erosion maps can serve as a useful reference for deriving land planning and management strategies and provide the opportunity to develop a decision plan for soil erosion prevention and control in south-central Niger. Keywords: remote sensing; GIS technique; RUSLE model; soil erosion; land use change; climatic zones; Maradi region 1. Introduction Soil erosion was known to be one of the most important environmental problems in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially for developing country [1,2]. Soil erosion is one of the world’s greatest scientific problems. It has various negative consequences, such as land degradation, decreasing water quality, sedimentation of rivers, and destruction of roads [3]. As well as these, it directly affects food production, human health, and the earth’s environment. For example, the gradual degradation of habitat is mainly caused by extreme soil erosion [4,5]. Soil erosion is the detachment of soil and its movement and deposition by various methods [6]. The issue has far-reaching political, social, economic, and environmental consequences, as it causes damage, both on-site and off-site [7–10], in many countries [11,12]. Moreover, soil erosion leads to a decrease in soil fertility, which has become a threat to sustainable agricultural production and water quality in these regions [13,14]. Furthermore, surface water change is generally symbolic of global analysis variance in a research region, where hydrological process might better understand the natural and anthropogenic disruption of meteorological features, as well as projected trends in water management [15,16]. Erosion is the process of the detachment and transport of soil particles by erosion forces. These erosive forces can be wind, ice, or water in the form of raindrop action and Water 2021, 13, 3511. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243511 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/water