ABSTRACT
The state of Tocantins is inserted in the new Brazilian agricultural frontier and has shown enormous potential for expansion of the agricultural lands. However, there is a lack of more elaborate scientific information for better planning and guide agricultural activities, especially regarding the soil and water conservation. Tocantins has a relevant rainfall spatial variability and, consequently, rainfall erosivity. Thus, this work aimed to develop models to estimate the mean monthly and annual rainfall and means rainfall erosivity factor (R-factor) of the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) for the state of Tocantins. For that, 97 historical series of daily rainfall were studied, considering a standard period of 25 years (1985-2009). The fitting of the models adjustment datasets consists of 86 rain-gauges, out of which, 11 were randomly selected and used solely for model validation. Afterward, maps of these variables were generated based on the regression-kriging procedure. The fitted models presented precision statistical that allow characterizing them as “good quality”, with a coefficient of determination higher than 0.68 for rainfall models and 0.65 for the R-factor model, besides acceptable bias. Therefore, the application of the models can be successfully carried out, aiding the agricultural planning in the state of Tocantins.
water erosion; geostatistics; regression-kriging; soil and water conservation; mapping
