Soil management effects on soil water erosion and runoff in Central Syria-A comparative evaluation of general linear model and random forest regression

The Mediterranean part of Syria is affected by soil water erosion due to poor land management. Within this context, the main aim of this research was to track soil erosion and runoff after each rainy storm between September 2013 and April 2014 (rainy season), on two slopes with different gradients (4.7%; 10.3%), under three soil cover types (SCTs): bare soil (BS), metal sieve cover (MC), and strip cropping (SC), in Central Syria. Two statistical multivariate models, the general linear model (GLM), and the random forest regression (RFR) were applied to reveal the importance of SCTs. Our results reveal that higher erosion rate, as well as runoff, were recorded in BS followed by MC, and SC. Accordingly, soil cover had a significant effect (p < 0.001) on soil erosion, and no significant difference was detected between MC and SC. Different combinations of slopes and soil cover had no effect on erosion, at least in this experiment. RFR performed better than GLM in predictions. GLM's median of mean absolute error was 21% worse than RFR. Nonetheless, 25 repetitions of 2-fold cross-validation ensured the highest available prediction accuracy for RFR. In conclusion, we revealed that runoff, rain intensity and soil cover were the most important factors in erosion.