Land use and Land Cover change and its resultant erosion susceptible level: an appraisal using RUSLE and Logistic Regression in a tropical plateau basin of West Bengal, India

Soil erosion trend depends on effective land use and land cover dynamics since overwhelming population growth in tropical region. The objective of this paper is to assess potential mean annual soil erosion rate, and conversion of erosion class incorporate with land use and land cover change in plateau fringe, undulating and low land of Kangsabati basin using Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) and multiple logistic regression (MLR). Both models denote potential mean soil erosion zone as 55% corresponds at low level in low land than medium level as 30% in undulating topography and high level as 15% in plateau fringe site. RUSLE indicates erosion rate increases with expanding area in degraded forest (169 ton ha−1 year−1, 137 km2), dense forest (134 ton ha−1 year−1, 55 km2) and settlement area (30 ton ha−1 year−1, 105 km2), whereas erosion rate decreases with reducing the area in barren land with laterite outcrop (− 154 ton ha−1 year−1, − 93 km2), double crop (− 40 ton ha−1 year−1, − 201 km2) and single crop yield (− 1 ton ha−1 year−1, − 62 km2) from 2002 to 2016. MLR predicts barren land with laterite outcrop and dense forest play a crucial role to determine the erosion susceptibility in plateau fringe, while degraded forest and single crop signify erosion susceptibility in undulating topography. Settlement and double crop are more significant in low land with proper validation. Model comparison depicts same class conversion finds out as 63.73% (low-to-low class, 41%) in low land, whereas high-to-low class finds in undulating topography (23%) and low-to-high class in plateau fringe (13%).