Modeling multiple concurrent soil erosion processes

Healthy soil is essential for agriculture and ecosystem functioning. Changes in soil quality have an impact on the delivery of critical ecosystem services such as food production, water supply, and regulation. Soil erosion is notoriously ephemeral because it is dependent on the nexus of vulnerable soil, weather, and antecedent moisture levels; particularly the occurrence of climate extremes, such as big strong rainfall episodes or droughts with wind. When the right mix of events occurs, positive feedbacks can lead to erosion striking with disastrous environmental and socio-economic consequences. A situation that makes it important to better identify locations where multiple concurrent soil erosion processes may occur. In this presentation we discuss (i) the geography of soil loss by water, wind, tillage, and crop harvesting erosion; (ii) their possible co-occurrence at EU (Borrelli et al., 2023a) and globally scale (Borrelli et al., 2023b); and (iii) how to better integrate research on soil erosion to improve modeling performances and to support decision-makers in both ex-ante and ex-post policy evaluation.   Acknowledgement. This research is part of the project “Accelerating collection and use of soil health information using AI technology to support the Soil Deal for Europe and EU Soil Observatory” (AI4SoilHealth) that received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101086179.   References Borrelli, P., Panagos, P., Alewell, C., Ballabio, C., de Oliveira Fagundes, H., Haregeweyn, N., ... & Robinson, D. A. (2023a). Policy implications of multiple concurrent soil erosion processes in European farmland. Nature Sustainability, 6(1), 103-112. Borrelli, P., Alewell, C., Yang, J. E., Bezak, N., Chen, Y., Fenta, A. A., ... & Panagos, P. (2023b). Towards a better understanding of pathways of multiple co-occurring erosion processes on global cropland. International Soil and Water Conservation Research, 11(4), 713-725.