American Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

 Soil erosion is a serious threat to counter global population growth with increased and sustainable agricultural production. Soil erosion is a crucial problem in Sikkim Himalaya where mountains and still tectonically active. Although deforestation, overgrazing and intensive agriculture, due to population pressure, have caused accelerated erosion, natural phenomena inducing erosion, such as exceptional rains and earthquakes, flooding in the high Himalayas are also common. In this context information on the effectiveness of soil and water conservation (SWC) measures was collected from field experiment in the Papung-Ben Khola watershed of Sikkim Himalaya. The overland flow and soil loss were estimated from 5 experimental plots under each type of conservation practices during 2009-2010 in monsoon seasons. These were estimated using natural shallow surface run-off and artificially delineated plots following Singh et al., (1983); Rai and Sharma (1998); and Sharma et al., (2001). The delineated plot size was 3×3m for estimations of overland flow and soil loss, and three plots were laid in each type of conservation practices Results provided by running a soil erosion assessment method overland flow was recorded to be highest in open land/barren land (1.34%). Among other land-uses the lowest overland flow was observed in large cardamom based agroforestry (1.08%), followed by terrace cultivation (1.10%), mandarin based agroforestry (1.11%) and mixed cropping ranked the top (1.21%) in the watershed. Overland flow varies in different types of SWC practices depending on their capacity to stand against the erosional power of rainfall. This paper deals with assessment of run-off and soil loss under different land-use practices in the watershed