Assessing Climate Variability and Landscape Vulnerability in the Chambal Basin, Central India

Environment degradation driven by changing climatic pattern and land deterioration poses significant challenges to semi-arid region by impacting water cycle dynamics, edaphic system and landscape resilience. The Chambal basin, which is environmentally fragile and climatically unstable, studies integrating climatic variability, soil erosion and land surface assessment are limited. While addressing the gap, this study aims to assess how climatic variability influences soil erosion dynamics and land surface stability in the Chambal basin. The Modified Mann-Kendall trends were used to assess climate variability, RUSLE-based modelling was used to estimate soil erosion, and the Bare Soil Index was used to map bare soil exposure for 2001, 2012, and 2024. The findings revealed that the Modified MK Z-values for rainfall ranging from −0.83 to 3.94, illustrated heterogeneous rainfall variability indicating both declining and increasing rainfall pockets, erratic rainfall zones. While minimum temperature shows substantial variability (Z = 2.70–4.08), particularly in the southwest and northeast, maximum temperature indicates a considerably increasing but spatially consistent trend with low variability (Z = 0.33–0.75).  The estimates of soil erosion vary from 0 to 11.93 t ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ with over 98% of the basin has very low erosion (<5 t ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹), but only a few steep, riparian, and dissected areas have slight to moderate erosion. The percentage of bare soil exposure decreased dramatically from 11.56% in 2001 to 9.53% in 2012 and then to 4.89% in 2024, showing better land cover conditions. The results indicate that despite the Chambal basin's increasing climatic stress, the terrain is still mostly stable with localized erosion vulnerability.  These insights are important for planning for erosion reduction, managing watersheds responsively to climate change, and enhancing the basin's environmental resilience.