Global vulnerability of soil ecosystems to erosion

Abstract

Context Soil erosion is one of the main threats driving soil degradation across the globe with important impacts on crop yields, soil biota, biogeochemical cycles, and ultimately human nutrition. Objectives Here, using an empirical model, we present a global and temporally explicit assessment of soil erosion risk according to recent (2001-2013) dynamics of rainfall and vegetation cover change to identify vulnerable areas for soils and soil biodiversity. Methods We used an adaptation of the Universal Soil Loss Equation together with state of the art remote sensing models to create a spatially and temporally explicit global model of soil erosion and soil protection. Finally, we overlaid global maps of soil biodiversity to assess the potential vulnerability of these soil communities to soil erosion. Results We show a consistent decline in soil erosion protection over time across terrestrial biomes, which resulted in a global increase of 11.7% in soil erosion rates. Notably, soil erosion risk systematically increased between 2006 and 2013 in relation to the Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (

Future impact of climate extremes in the Mediterranean: Soil erosion projections when fire and extreme rainfall meet

“…As global change accelerates, more frequent and intense fires in the Mediterranean, along with a higher frequency of extreme rainfall events, can increase soil degradation and loss, making ecosystems less resilient to natural disturbance, decreasing biodiversity, and putting human wellbeing at risk by threatening food and water security (Certini, 2005;Cramer et al, 2018;Guerra et al, 2020). Our results…”

“…In this study, the P factor was indirectly taken into account through the impact of fire management on vegetation cover C (see Section 'Future projections of C‐factor values: The MEDFIRE model'). In the final step, the average capacity of forestland to prevent soil erosion is calculated as the ratio between mitigated impac t ( βe ) and the structural impact ( γ ) at the pixel level. While this ratio equals the vegetation cover factor ( C ) for any pixel level, when averaged regionally, provides a weighted average of soil mitigation potential by forestland that gives more relevance to areas with higher soil erosion risk (Guerra et al, 2020). Also, predictions of soil loss per ha (t ha −1 ) were summed up across all forestland of the study area to get estimates of soil erosion at the landscape level.…”

Untitled

“…Elaboration of cartography of the study of the ground of Metropolitan Lima and its relationship with the urban sustainability (Guerra et al, 2020).…”

Uncovering the Role of Biophysical Factors and Socioeconomic Forces Shaping Soil Sensitivity to Degradation: Insights from Italy

“…However, soil characteristics such as fertility, quality, or depth, are particularly expensive to maintain and associated with very slow (natural) renovation processes [25,26]. Scholars highlight several types of soil degradation processes affecting these above-mentioned characteristics such as erosion [27][28][29][30], organic carbon depletion [31][32][33], sealing [34,35], pollution due to trace or toxic elements [36,37], compaction [38,39], salinization [40,41], nutrient leaching [42,43], or the loss of biodiversity, e.g., because of climate change [44][45][46][47]. All of them could be also enhanced following the potential intensification of human activities [48,49] and global warming [50,51].…”