Environmental Erosion Research Journal

The presence of human in nature and his willing or unwilling activities have culminated in a series of destruction and balance that clash in nature. Today, the increase of population and high demand for agriculture production has resulted in the destruction of plant coverage on the land, particularly forests and grassland, by human use that leads to increased erosion. We have investigated via using the world soil erosion equation, TM satellites images (1998) and ETM (2009) the erosion of Sivand River during 1998 and 2009. For the extraction and processing of satellite images, ERDAS was used for mapping and its related analysis we used Arc GIS and SPSS software.The results showed that erosion in 1998 was 406,172,389 tons and in 2009 it was 416,364,377 tons, an increase of 1.87 tonsper hectare. The main cause of erosion changes during the course of this study was the decrease in plant coverage which resulted from increased population as well as the interference in nature and immethodical grazing in grassland areas. These decreased soil coverage and weakened the soil against rainfall and other factors.