Meteorological factor in regressive erosion in the south-west of the Moscow Region

Abstract

For 15 years observations of more than 75 heads of small erosional landforms development were carried out within a large Satino erosional station (the Protva River basin) using fixed markers technique. The observations provided not only new data on dynamics and morphology of small erosional landforms within the Moscow glaciation marginal zone, but also enabled to compare the quantitative information on the gully development with the meteorological materials of VNIGMI. The following meteorological characteristics appear to have bearing on the erosion activation: water stored in snow at the beginning of melting in excess of 90 mm, spring coming with a rush in case of the low ice content in the soil or slow spring in case of high ice content. The results prove the spring snow melting to be of primary importance for headword growth of small erosional forms as compared with rain-induced erosion.