Rain Factor Calculation - Comparison Of Different Methodologies Which Consider Data Avaibility

Soil water erosion is one of the most dangerous degradation process which influences the soil fertility as well as the other important soil properties. This fact brings up need to more detailed research of erosive factors. One of these factors is rainfall erosivity factor (R). There are a lot of methodologies which calculate this factor and they depend on the data availability. The aim of this paper is to compare these different methodologies and evaluate their impact on the final value of rainfall erosivity factor. We compared equations which calculate only with annual precipitation data (equation designed by Sabata, Holy etc.) with modified methodology of Wishcmeier-Smith. The results showed that equations which calculate only with annual precipitation are several times higher than results obtained with modified Wischmeier-Smith methodology. These significant differences invoke the question if the applied anti-erosion measurements are adequate, because values of rain factor which are used in our conditions are significantly lower than calculated values with using of both methodologies.