Pakistan Journal of Applied Sciences 3 (10-12): 659-669, 2003 lSSN 1607-8926 © 2003 Asian Network for Scientific l nformation Soil Erosion Risk Prediction with RS and GIS for the Northwestern Part of Hebei Province, China Ayad Mohammed Fadhil Al-Quraishi Faculty of Earth Resources, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China Abstract: A soil erosion risk map was developed for Northwestern part of Hebei province, China, using the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE). Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) technology were used in this study. Spatially modeling soil erosion in the GIS required generating representative raster layers based on secondary data for the following parameters; rainfall erosivity, slope length/gradient, soil erodibility and conservation practices. Landsat TM imagery for the year 1996 was utilized to produce land use/cover maps of the study area based on the maximum likelihood classification method. These maps were then, used to generate the conservation practice factor in the RUSLE. The analysis was performed using IDRISI32, a raster based GIS software. Results showed that 3,413.51 km 2 (54.968%) has very slight soil erosion and 1, 761.98 km 2 (28.373%) has slight soil erosion. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of RS and GIS in generating soil risk maps. The produced erosion risk map is a valuable resource for planners to minimize soil erosion problems caused by future and ongoing development projects on the study area and the other areas as well. Key words: Soil erosion, RUSLE, RS, GIS, Hebei, China Introduction Desertification is one of the major environmental issues around the world. It is estimated that about one sixth of the world's population and one quarter of the global terrestrial land is threatened by desertification (UNCED, 1994). China suffers many kinds of soil erosion and desertification (Xianmo et al., 1999; Qinke, 1994). It is a developing country with the largest population in the world over 1.3 billion and it is also one of the countries affected most seriously by desertification. The affected area is about 3.317 million km 2 , accounting for 34.6%, approximately one third of the nation's land area with around 400 million people being under the threat of desertification. Desertification is widely distributed in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas of the Northwest China, North China and the western part of Northeast China (CCICCD, 1996). Desertification caused by water erosion accounts for 47.9%, wind erosion for 43.6% and salinization for 8.5%. Another 4.7 million ha are potentially susceptible to desertification. Soil erosion is a naturally occurring process on all land and it is a normal geologic process associated with the hydrologic cycle. The agents of soil erosion are Water and Wind, each contributing a significant amount of soil loss each year (Strahler, 1971). This research develops 659