The new assessment of soil loss by water erosion in Europe
External Data Spec
Published 25 Oct 2016
Soil erosion by water is one of the major threats to soils in the European Union, with a negative impact on ecosystem services, crop production, drinking water and carbon stocks. The European Commission's Soil Thematic Strategy has identified soil erosion as a relevant issue for the European Union, and has proposed an approach to monitor soil erosion. This paper presents the application of a modified version of the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model (RUSLE2015) to estimate soil loss in Europe for the reference year 2010, within which the input factors (Rainfall erosivity, Soil erodibility, Cover-Management, Topography, Support practices) are modelled with the most recently available pan-European datasets. While RUSLE has been used before in Europe, RUSLE2015 improves the quality of estimation by introducing updated (2010), high-resolution (100 m), peer-reviewed input layers. The mean soil loss rate in the European Union's erosion-prone lands (agricultural, forests and semi-natural areas) was found to be 2.46 t ha −1 yr −1 , resulting in a total soil loss of 970 Mt annually.
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Provider:
- Joint Research Centre (JRC)
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Dataset URL:
- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901115300654
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For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/external/the-new-assessment-of-soil or scan the QR code.
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