Assessment of soil erosion in the Lipnica watershed, Polimije, Montenegro

Assessment of soil erosion risk is of great importance for management of natural resources, allowing decision makers to modify land use properly implementing environmental strategies more sustainable in the long-term. Inappropriate land use and land management is often viewed as main cause of accelerated erosion rates. Modelling soil erosion rates is key to understand the impact of future land management and climate change on land degradation. Polimlje is one of five river basins in Montenegro that drains toward the Danube and is divided into fifty-seven sub basins. Lipnica watershed is one of them where we studied soil erosion processes using the IntErO model, with the Erosion Potential Method embedded in the algorithm of this computer-graphic method. For the current state of land use, calculated maximal outflow from the river basin is 58 m3s-1 for the incidence of 100 years and the net soil loss is 469 m³year-1, specific 92 m³ year-1 per square kilometre. With the results obtained we were able to conclude that the river basin belongs in „Destruction Category V”, according to the classification system of Gavrilovic; the erosion process is very weak. This study has shown that the IntErO model and Erosion Potential Method are useful tools for researchers in calculation of sediment yield at the level of the river basins for the South East European region