Mapping monthly rainfall erosivity in Europe

Abstract

Rainfall erosivity as a dynamic factor of soil loss by water erosion is modelled intra-annually for the first time at European scale. The development of Rainfall Erosivity Database at European Scale (REDES) and its 2015 update with the extension to monthly component allowed to develop monthly and seasonal R-factor maps and assess rainfall erosivity both spatially and temporally. During winter months, significant rainfall erosivity is present only in part of the Mediterranean countries. A sudden increase of erosivity occurs in major part of European Union (except Mediterranean basin, western part of Britain and Ireland) in May and the highest values are registered during summer months. Starting from September, R-factor has a decreasing trend. The mean rainfall erosivity in summer is almost 4 times higher (315 MJ mm ha− 1 h− 1) compared to winter (87 MJ mm ha− 1 h− 1).The Cubist model has been selected among various statistical models to perform the spatial interpolation due to its excellent performance, ability to model non-linearity and interpretability. The monthly prediction is an order more difficult than the annual one as it is limited by the number of covariates and, for consistency, the sum of all months has to be close to annual erosivity. The performance of the Cubist models proved to be generally high, resulting in R2 values between 0.40 and 0.64 in cross-validation. The obtained months show an increasing trend of erosivity occurring from winter to summer starting from western to Eastern Europe. The maps also show a clear delineation of areas with different erosivity seasonal patterns, whose spatial outline was evidenced by cluster analysis. The monthly erosivity maps can be used to develop composite indicators that map both intra-annual variability and concentration of erosive events. Consequently, spatio-temporal mapping of rainfall erosivity permits to identify the months and the areas with highest risk of soil loss where conservation measures should be applied in different seasons of the year.

The use of archived precipitation data in the assessment of soil erosion risk in the Świętokrzyskie Province of central-southern Poland

“…the highest mean erosivity index values has been noted in Limanowa and Puławy just in June and July . Ballabio et al (2017) described similar pattern of the R-factor's seasonal variability. Its highest values occur in southern Poland in June and July.…”

“…Recently, an international research project was carried out to assess rainfall erosivity in Europe (Panagos et al 2015, Ballabio et al 2017. Data from 1568 precipitation stations in all EU Member States and Switzerland were used to produce maps of rainfall erosivity.…”

“…Number of precipitation data sets used in the study amounted from 3 in Lithuania up to 251 in Italy. Likewise, the authors utilized only few precipitation data sets from Poland (Panagos et al 2015, Ballabio et al 2017.…”

Crop-management factor calculation using weights of spatio-temporal distribution of rainfall erosivity

“…The IV-X -months; STD C -spatio-temporally distributed C factor; C -calculation according to valid methodology (Janeček et al 2012b), diff -difference between STD C and C in % The relatively time-consuming C calculation was automated in the STD C factor GIS tool (version with integrated or optional R data) based on an innovative procedure of determination of R factor weights for each agro-technical phase by land parcel geographic location. The version with optional R data is universal and useful for all R maps created in the CR and also other countries (monthly R dataset for Europe by Ballabio et al 2017). The variability of R distribution influenced C factor values by 1.1-18.35%.…”

Erosion Losses of Soils on Arable Land in the European part of Russia

“…Estimation of erosion potential of the relief was carried out by a point-statistical method using maps of scale 1: 25,000 [3]. At present time, geoinformation systems are used to calculate erosion losses of soils using modern models.Many assessments of potential soil losses for large areas have been carried out recently for the territory of Europe [5,6,7] as well as in other areas -in the Eastern Basin in China [8] with the use of this approach.…”