(4)
2.3.2. Determination and calculation of factors that characterize the
topography
Topographic relief (Normark and Spiess, 1976), surface roughness
(Romkens et al., 2002), surface cutting depth (He et al., 2016), and
runoff path density (Zhao and Govers, 2016) were used to describe
internal topographic characteristics of each runoff plot. The above
indicators were calculated based on the measured topography data.
Topographic relief was calculated based on change-point theory. Firstly,
the average value \(\overset{\overline{}}{X}\) was calculated according
to the elevation value of 0.2m grid points
{X1,X2,X3…Xn}
in the runoff plot, and then the average topographic relief of the
runoff plot could be calculated: