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The Rarh Bengal region in West Bengal, particularly the eastern fringe area of the Chotanagpur plateau, is highly prone to water-induced gully erosion. In this study, we analyzed the spatial patterns of a potential gully erosion in the Gandheswari watershed. This area is highly affected by monsoon rainfall and ongoing land-use changes. This combination causes intensive gully erosion and land degradation. Therefore, we developed gully erosion susceptibility maps (GESMs) using the machine learning (ML) algorithms boosted regression tree (BRT), Bayesian additive regression tree (BART), support vector regression (SVR), and the ensemble of the SVR-Bee algorithm. The gully erosion inventory maps are based on a total of 178 gully head-cutting points, taken as the dependent factor, and gully erosion conditioning factors, which serve as the independent factors. We validated the ML model results using the area under the curve (AUC), accuracy (ACC), true skill statistic (TSS), and Kappa coefficient index. The AUC result of the BRT, BART, SVR, and SVR-Bee models are 0.895, 0.902, 0.927, and 0.960, respectively, which show very good GESM accuracies. The ensemble model provides more accurate prediction results than any single ML model used in this study.

Gully erosion is the most severe type of water erosion and is a major land degradation process. Gully erosion susceptibility mapping (GESM)’s efficiency and interpretability remains a challenge, especially in complex terrain areas. In this study, a WoE-MLC model was used to solve the above problem, which combines machine learning classification algorithms and the statistical weight of evidence (WoE) model in the Loess Plateau. The three machine learning (ML) algorithms utilized in this research were random forest (RF), gradient boosted decision trees (GBDT), and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost). The results showed that: (1) GESM were well predicted by combining both machine learning regression models and WoE-MLC models, with the area under the curve (AUC) values both greater than 0.92, and the latter was more computationally efficient and interpretable; (2) The XGBoost algorithm was more efficient in GESM than the other two algorithms, with the strongest generalization ability and best performance in avoiding overfitting (averaged AUC = 0.947), followed by the RF algorithm (averaged AUC = 0.944), and GBDT algorithm (averaged AUC = 0.938); and (3) slope gradient, land use, and altitude were the main factors for GESM. This study may provide a possible method for gully erosion susceptibility mapping at large scale.

Gully erosion susceptibility mapping (GESM) through predicting the spatial distribution of areas prone to gully erosion is required to plan gully erosion control strategies relevant to soil conservation. Recently, machine learning (ML) models have received increasing attention for GESM due to their vast capabilities. In this context, this paper sought to review the modeling procedure of GESM using ML models, including the required datasets and model development and validation. The results showed that elevation, slope, plan curvature, rainfall and land use/cover were the most important factors for GESM. It is also concluded that although ML models predict the locations of zones prone to gullying reasonably well, performance ranking of such methods is difficult because they yield different results based on the quality of the training dataset, the structure of the models, and the performance indicators. Among the ML techniques, random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM) are the most widely used models for GESM, which show promising results. Overall, to improve the prediction performance of ML models, the use of data-mining techniques to improve the quality of the dataset and of an ensemble estimation approach is recommended. Furthermore, evaluation of ML models for the prediction of other types of gully erosion, such as rill–interill and ephemeral gully should be the subject of more studies in the future. The employment of a combination of topographic indices and ML models is recommended for the accurate extraction of gully trajectories that are the main input of some process-based models.

In order to determine the susceptibility of gully erosion at a small watershed scale on the Loess Plateau of China, three hybrid models were developed. These models were based on the Multi-Attributive Border Approximation Area Comparison (MABAC), frequency ratio (FR), CatBoost (CB), LightGBM (LG), and extremely-randomized tree (ET). Based on the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) photos, a total of 83 gullies with 12,150 gully pixels and 8 conditioning variables were extracted and used to create the gully inventory database. The correlations between the conditioning parameters and the pixels of gullies were then determined using FR, and the relative importance of these conditioning factors was quantified using machine learning. Then, for gully erosion susceptibility mapping (GESM), three hybrid gully erosion susceptibility models called MABAC-FR-CB, MABAC-FR-LG, and MABAC-FR-ET were developed. The performance of three hybrid models was assessed using the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) and the Kappa coefficient. The results claimed that slope steepness greatly influenced the erosion of the gully. The MABAC-FR-ET performed the most precisely, with area under curvature (AUC) of 0.998 and a Kappa of 0.952. As a result, it was determined that MABAC-FR-ET is the most exact and accurate method for predicting the susceptibility to gully erosion in the study watershed.

In the present study, gully erosion susceptibility was evaluated for the area of the Robat Turk Watershed in Iran. The assessment of gully erosion susceptibility was performed using four state-of-the-art data mining techniques: random forest (RF), credal decision trees (CDTree), kernel logistic regression (KLR), and best-first decision tree (BFTree). To the best of our knowledge, the KLR and CDTree algorithms have been rarely applied to gully erosion modeling. In the first step, from the 242 gully erosion locations that were identified, 70% (170 gullies) were selected as the training dataset, and the other 30% (72 gullies) were considered for the result validation process. In the next step, twelve gully erosion conditioning factors, including topographic, geomorphological, environmental, and hydrologic factors, were selected to estimate gully erosion susceptibility. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) was used to estimate the performance of the models. The results revealed that the RF model had the best performance (AUC = 0.893), followed by the KLR (AUC = 0.825), the CDTree (AUC = 0.808), and the BFTree (AUC = 0.789) models. Overall, the RF model performed significantly better than the others, which may support the application of this method to a transferable susceptibility model in other areas. Therefore, we suggest using the RF, KLR, and CDT models for gully erosion susceptibility mapping in other prone areas to assess their reproducibility.

Ephemeral gully erosion is one of the main sources of soil loss from agricultural landscapes. Various tools including predictive models with machine learning (ML) algorithms have shown promise to identify susceptible areas. However, ML models have two limitations: (1) a trained model in one area may not be applicable in another area and (2) their application for susceptibility mapping of ephemeral gullies at large-scale areas presents a challenge due to the small size of these features and the need for digitization of all gullies for accurate susceptibility mapping. To overcome these limitations, a novel approach was introduced in the current study for comprehensive validation of ML models and prepare a susceptibility map of ephemeral gullies using an areal transfer of calibration–validation relations. Five ML models were evaluated in Northern Lake Erie Basin as a large-scale region. First, the region was divided into three zones based on the most effective factors of gully formation, and a total of eight watersheds were selected in Zone 1 and Zone 2 (hereafter study area). Zone 3 was not considered, because no gullies were observed in this zone. All the ML models were compared using a new validation approach, including local (trained and validated in the same area) and transferred (trained in one area and tested in other areas). Results showed that random forest (RF) was the most accurate local model in both Zone 1 (accuracy = 0.8833, AUC = 0.8830, sensitivity = 0.9239, and specificity = 0.8537) and Zone 2 (accuracy = 0.8606, AUC = 0.8608, sensitivity = 0.8987, and specificity = 0.8381), while gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) was the most accurate transferred model (accuracy = 0.7298, AUC = 0.7297, and sensitivity = 0.7826). From the results of the current study, it can be concluded that (1) zonation technique supports the prediction of ephemeral gullies by dividing the study area into the small zones that carry similar topographical and morphological characteristics and (2) the local-transferred validation technique is a helpful method for finding the ML model that can be trained in a small watershed and scale up to the larger area without further calibration.

What are the main findings? * In Northeast China’s Heihe Mollisol (black soil) belt, anthropogenic factors—land use and the Human Footprint Index—outweighed topography in driving gully erosion, with the highest susceptibility concentrated in the southwestern cultivated lowlands. * Tree-based models (XGBoost best, AUC 0.95) outperformed logistic regression, but spatial cross-validation across districts of the Heihe region exposed a 0.11 AUC optimism from random splitting that conventional studies overlook. In Northeast China’s Heihe Mollisol (black soil) belt, anthropogenic factors—land use and the Human Footprint Index—outweighed topography in driving gully erosion, with the highest susceptibility concentrated in the southwestern cultivated lowlands. Tree-based models (XGBoost best, AUC 0.95) outperformed logistic regression, but spatial cross-validation across districts of the Heihe region exposed a 0.11 AUC optimism from random splitting that conventional studies overlook. What are the implications of the main findings? * The Heihe case shows that gully susceptibility mapping in Mollisol farmlands requires spatially explicit validation and interpretable ML to avoid overstated accuracy and to credibly attribute risk to human disturbance. * For black-soil regions like Heihe, a 20% NDVI increase could cut high-susceptibility area by 12%, identifying targeted revegetation in the southwestern lowlands (e.g., Beian, Nenjiang) as a practical complement to engineering controls. The Heihe case shows that gully susceptibility mapping in Mollisol farmlands requires spatially explicit validation and interpretable ML to avoid overstated accuracy and to credibly attribute risk to human disturbance. For black-soil regions like Heihe, a 20% NDVI increase could cut high-susceptibility area by 12%, identifying targeted revegetation in the southwestern lowlands (e.g., Beian, Nenjiang) as a practical complement to engineering controls. Gully erosion is a major driver of irreversible soil loss in Northeast China’s Mollisol belt, a region that supplies roughly one-quarter of the national grain output. Existing susceptibility assessments in this region have rarely combined multi-model comparison with spatially explicit cross-validation, and the predictive contribution of composite anthropogenic indicators such as the Human Footprint Index (HFI) has not been quantitatively benchmarked against conventional topographic variables. This study addresses these gaps for the Heihe region by combining an inventory of 4020 gully polygons supported by field checks in Xunke County, 16 VIF-screened environmental factors, three tree-based ensemble models and a logistic regression baseline. Under stratified random splitting, XGBoost achieved the highest discrimination (AUC = 0.95, κ = 0.74); under leave-one-district-out spatial cross-validation all tree-based models retained AUC above 0.83, confirming that random-split metrics overestimate discrimination by approximately 0.11 AUC units due to spatial autocorrelation and inter-district covariate shift. SHAP analysis identified LULC and HFI as the dominant predictors, exceeding all topographic variables, while slope gradient contributed least—consistent with the low-relief, intensively cultivated character of the study area. Susceptibility was highest in the southwestern agricultural lowlands. A one-factor sensitivity test in which only NDVI was increased by 20% suggested a reduction in modelled high-susceptibility area of approximately 12%, although co-occurring land-cover and hydrological changes were not simulated. The multi-model framework, integrating spatial cross-validation and post hoc interpretability, provides an explicit estimate of conventional evaluation optimism and supports spatially differentiated erosion management.

This work summarizes the results of a geomorphological and bivariate statistical approach to gully erosion susceptibility mapping in the Turbolo stream catchment (northern Calabria, Italy). An inventory map of gully erosion landforms of the area has been obtained by detailed field survey and air photograph interpretation. Lithology, land use, slope, aspect, plan curvature, stream power index, topographical wetness index and length-slope factor were assumed as gully erosion predisposing factors. In order to estimate and validate gully erosion susceptibility, the mapped gully areas were divided in two groups using a random partitions strategy. One group (training set) was used to prepare the susceptibility map, using a bivariate statistical analysis (Information Value method) in GIS environment, while the second group (validation set) to validate the susceptibility map, using the success and prediction rate curves. The validation results showed satisfactory agreement between the susceptibility map and the existing data on gully areas locations; therefore, over 88% of the gullies of the validation set are correctly classified falling in high and very high susceptibility areas. The susceptibility map, produced using a methodology that is easy to apply and to update, represents a useful tool for sustainable planning, conservation and protection of land from gully processes. Therefore, this methodology can be used to assess gully erosion susceptibility in other areas of Calabria, as well as in other regions, especially in the Mediterranean area, that have similar morphoclimatic features and sensitivity to concentrated erosion.

Gully erosion is one of the significant environmental issues facing the black soil regions in Northeast China, and its formation is closely related to various environmental factors. This study employs multiple machine learning models to assess gully erosion susceptibility in this region. The primary objective is to evaluate and optimize the top-performing model under high-resolution UAV data conditions, utilize the optimized best model to identify key factors influencing the occurrence of gully erosion from 11 variables, and generate a local gully erosion susceptibility map. Using 0.2 m resolution DEM and DOM data obtained from high-resolution UAVs, 2,554,138 pixels from 64 gully and 64 non-gully plots were analyzed and compiled into the research dataset. Twelve models, including Logistic Regression, K-Nearest Neighbors, Classification and Regression Trees, Random Forest, Boosted Regression Trees, Adaptive Boosting, Extreme Gradient Boosting, an Artificial Neural Network, a Convolutional Neural Network, as well as optimized XGBOOST, a CNN with a Multi-Head Attention mechanism, and an ANN with a Multi-Head Attention Mechanism, were utilized to evaluate gully erosion susceptibility in the Dahewan area. The performance of each model was evaluated using ROC curves, and the model fitting performance and robustness were validated through Accuracy and Cohen’s Kappa statistics, as well as RMSE and MAE indicators. The optimized XGBOOST model achieved the highest performance with an AUC-ROC of 0.9909, and through SHAP analysis, we identified roughness as the most significant factor affecting local gully erosion, with a relative importance of 0.277195. Additionally, the Gully Erosion Susceptibility Map generated by the optimized XGBOOST model illustrated the distribution of local gully erosion risks.

High-accuracy gully erosion susceptibility maps play a crucial role in erosion vulnerability assessment and risk management. The principal purpose of the present research is to evaluate the predictive power of individual machine learning models such as random forest (RF), decision tree (DT), and support vector machine (SVM), and ensemble machine learning approaches such as stacking, voting, bagging, and boosting with k-fold cross validation resampling techniques for modeling gully erosion susceptibility in the Oued El Abid watershed in the Moroccan High Atlas. A dataset comprising 200 gully points, identified through field observations and high-resolution Google Earth imagery, was used, alongside 21 gully erosion conditioning factors selected based on their importance, information gain, and multi-collinearity analysis. The exploratory results indicate that all derived gully erosion susceptibility maps had a good accuracy for both individual and ensemble models. Based on the receiver operating characteristic (ROC), the RF and the SVM models had better predictive performances, with AUC = 0.82, than the DT model. However, ensemble models significantly outperformed individual models. Among the ensembles, the RF-DT-SVM stacking model achieved the highest predictive accuracy, with an AUC value of 0.86, highlighting its robustness and superior predictive capability. The prioritization results also confirmed the RF-DT-SVM ensemble model as the best. These findings highlight the superiority of ensemble learning models over individual ones and underscore their potential for application in similar geo-environmental contexts.