Abstract
The Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) model is the most frequently used model for soil erosion risk estimation. Among the six input layers, the combined slope length and slope angle (LS-factor) has the greatest influence on soil loss at the European scale. The S-factor measures the effect of slope steepness, and the L-factor defines the impact of slope length. The combined LS-factor describes the effect of topography on soil erosion. The European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC) developed a new pan-European high-resolution soil erosion assessment to achieve a better understanding of the spatial and temporal patterns of soil erosion in Europe. The LS-calculation was performed using the original equation proposed by Desmet and Govers (1996) and implemented using the System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses (SAGA), which incorporates a multiple flow algorithm and contributes to a precise estimation of flow accumulation. The LS-factor dataset was calculated using a high-resolution (25 m) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for the whole European Union, resulting in an improved delineation of areas at risk of soil erosion as compared to lower-resolution datasets. This combined approach of using GIS software tools with high-resolution DEMs has been successfully applied in regional assessments in the past, and is now being applied for first time at the European scale.
Highlights
IntroductionSoil erosion is a land degradation process that impacts a number of functions (biodiversity, food production, carbon stock, ecosystem services), the precise quantitate assessment of which can be modeled
Soil erosion is a land degradation process that impacts a number of functions, the precise quantitate assessment of which can be modeled
The application of the methodology resulted in the first topographic mapping of the LS-factor at 25-m resolution for the European Union (Figure 1)
Summary
Soil erosion is a land degradation process that impacts a number of functions (biodiversity, food production, carbon stock, ecosystem services), the precise quantitate assessment of which can be modeled. The Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) and its revised version (RUSLE) are frequently used in soil erosion modeling even at large scales, despite their shortcomings. The main input layers for the USLE model are rainfall erosivity (R-factor), soil erodibility (K-factor), vegetation cover (C-factor), slope length and slope angle (LS-factor) and the support practice (P-factor). The Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is a quantitative representation of the Earth’s surface that provides basic information about the terrain and allows for the derivation of attributes such as slope, aspect, drainage area and network, curvature, and topographic index [3]. The DEM and the LS factor determine the spatial resolution (cell size) of the soil erosion model results, and incorporate the soil erosion potential due to surface runoff. The main objective of this study is to compute the LS-factor based on a high-resolution
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