Causes of environmental deterioration in eastern barbados since colonization

Abstract

The headwater area of the Joe's River Basin in eastern Barbados has a severe erosion problem. Symptoms of the deteriorating physical environment include channel incision, gullying, stream capture, spawning of erosion cells and extensive mass movements, products of the increase of erosive energy throughput in the system. Separate experimental runoff plots were established in the basin to represent three different environmental conditions: re-vegetated hill slopes, cane fields and abandoned down-hill furrows. Analysis of data reveals an association between land use types and runoff. It supports the hypothesis that large-scale deforestation and cane growing since colonization have changed the hydrologic regime, bringing accelerated erosion to these areas outcropped by the relatively weak, impervious Joe's River Muds. The present “conservation” practice of down-hill furrows is aggravating the erosion problem further.