Soil Erodibility Analysis and Mapping in Gilgel Ghibe-1 Catchment, Omo Ghibe River Basin, Ethiopia.

Soil erodibility factor measures the susceptibility of soil particles to transportation and detachment by erosive agents. Soil erosion and sedimentation models use soil characteristics and erodibility as major input. However, in developing country like Ethiopia including the catchment soil erodibility and soil related properties data is limited. Due to this different scholars use different data source which is adopted from large scale and come up with very varying result. Because of this the study was designed to avail soil erodibility data of the catchment from primary data. A total of 80 composite soil samples were collected from the catchment with a GPS coordinate and analyzed for soil textural class (hydrometer method) and soil organic matter (walkley-black method) at Jima Agricultural Research Centre soil, water and plant tissue laboratory.