This thesis is concerned with accelerated soil erosion in the Lammermuir Hills in South-east Scotland. It reviews the literature on erosion in upland Britain and presents the controversy surrounding this issue in southern Scotland. Remote-sensing procedures are used to examine the extent of erosion phenomena in the study area. Possible associations between erosion occurrence and certain soil types and land uses are analysed. Historical documents, maps and sequential aerial photographs are used to investigate possible changes in the size and distribution of erosion features over time. The results of further work on erosion rates obtained by field monitoring in various parts of the Lammermuira are also presented and analysed. These studies show that erosion is much less of a problem than the literature suggests. Only 1.4% of the area studied was found to be occupied by erosion forms and only 0.8% of the area appeared to be actively eroding. The rates of erosion measured in the field were found to be low and in keeping with findings obtained in other parts of upland Britain. The results also suggest associations between erosion occurrence and certain land-uses and soil-series. The possibility of using range management techniques to produce more definite information about land-use/erosion relationships is explored. The results suggest that while they are not eroding very much at present, some parts of the Lammermuirs are overburned and over-occupied by sheep and could well suffer from erosion problems in the future. The study confirms the usefulness of the standard methods of investigating erosion in upland areas, such as aerial photography mapping and erosion pin monitoring. It also suggests that the hitherto little-used range management approach has considerable promise for appraising erosion in those areas of upland Britain where rapid results are required.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:652993 |
| Date | January 1981 |
| Creators | Jennings, Iain |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/12293 |
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