Effects of rainfall kinetic energy on soil loss
Fig. 4 shows the relationship between kinetic energy of rainfall and soil loss. It shows that for this experiment, the
relationship between kinetic energy and soil loss is a non-linear function.
3.3. Effects of storm quartiles on soil loss
The relationship between soil loss and storm quartiles is presented in Fig. 5. The logarithmic and power equations
yield the highest determination coefficients, yielding a strong non-linear relationship between different quartiles of a
storm and soil loss. The fourth storm quartile is strongly correlated with soil loss, consequently the least scatter is
found around the regression line in the 4th quartile. These different effects across various storm patterns and their
major role in soil erosion studies was also confirmed by Flanagan et al. (1987), Parsons and Stone (2006) and Wei
et al. (2007).
Generally, non-linearity in hydrological processes is supported by Beven (2001), as he noted that hydrological
systems are nonlinear and the implications of this nonlinearity should be taken into account in the formulation and
application of distributed models.