Impact Assessment of Vegetation Growth on Soil Erosion of a Landfill Cover Surface

Soil erosion is a very common phenomenon encountered at many sloped earthen geotechnical structures. For instance, the surface soil of an inclined landfill cover system undergoes the erosion due to various adverse atmospheric variants. This is one of the major causes for performance failure in the cover system. However, previous researchers have rarely conducted the study for field assessment of soil erosion in high rainfall tropical regions such as northeast India. The literature advocates the utilization of vegetation for erosion management. This study investigated the impact of vegetation growth on soil erosion of a cover surface layer under both natural and controlled artificial rainfall. The soil erosion was monitored by collecting the soil loss due to rainfall. Vegetation growth was evaluated based on photographic image analyses. The study clearly indicates that the vegetation growth can contribute to reduction of soil erosion from the landfill cover surface.