Utilizing geodetectors to identify conditioning factors for gully erosion risk in the black soil region of northeast China

In the black soil region of Northeast China, the issue of gully erosion persists as a significant threat, resulting in extensive damage to farmland, severe degradation of the black soil, and decreased productivity. It is therefore of utmost importance to accurately identify areas that are susceptible to gully erosion to effectively prevent and control its negative impact. This study tried to utilize geographical detectors (geodetectors) as a means to identify the factors that contribute to the distribution of gullies and assess the risk of gully erosion (GER) in five catchments within the region, with areas ranging from approximately 80 km²–200 km². By employing the geodetectors method, fourteen geo-environmental factors were analyzed, including topographic attributes (such as aspect, catchment area, convergence index, elevation, plan curvature, profile curvature, slope length, slope, stream power index, and topographic wetness index), channel network distance, vegetation index (NDVI and EVI), as well as land use/land cover (LULC). The modeling of GER was conducted using the random forest algorithm (RFA). Out of the fourteen examined geo-environmental factors, only a subset, comprising less than or equal to 50%, demonstrated a significant (p < 0.05) influence on the spatial distribution of gullies. These selected factors were sufficient in assessing GER, with LULC (mean q-value = 0.270) and elevation (mean q-value = 0.113) identified as the two most important factors. Furthermore, the RFA exhibited satisfactory performance across all catchments, achieving AUC values ranging from 0.712 to 0.933 (mean = 0.863) in predicting GER. Overall, the catchment areas were classified into high, moderate, low, and very low-risk levels, representing 9.67%–15.95%, 19.28%–26.08%, 24.59%–30.55%, and 30.54%–39.08% of the total area, respectively. Importantly, a significant positive linear relationship (r² = 0.722, p < 0.05) was observed between the proportion of cropland area and the occurrence of high-level GER. Although the primary risk levels were categorized as low and very low, the proportion of high-risk levels exceeded the existing gully coverage (0.34%–3.69%). These findings highlight the substantial potential for gully erosion and underscore the necessity for intensified efforts in the prevention and control of gully erosion within the black soil region of Northeast China.