Abstract
Abstract. This study presents a revised and scale-adapted Foster-Meyer-Onstad model (Foster et al., 1977) for the transport of soil erosion sediments under scarce input data, with the acronym CliFEM (Climate Forcing and Erosion Modelling). This new idea was addressed to develop a monthly time scale invariant Net Erosion model (NER), with the aim to consider the different erosion processes operating at different time scales in the Sele River Basin (South Italy), during 1973–2007 period. The sediment delivery ratio approach was applied to obtain an indirect estimate of the gross erosion too. The examined period was affected by a changeable weather regime, where extreme events may have contributed to exacerbate soil losses, although only the 19% of eroded sediment was delivered at outlet of the basin. The long-term average soil erosion was very high (73 Mg ha−1 per year ± 58 Mg ha−1). The estimate of monthly erosion showed catastrophic soil losses during the soil tillage season (August–October), with consequent land degradation of the hilly areas of the Sele River Basin.
Highlights
The full knowledge of climate drivers of soil erosion needs extended meteorological, hydrological and land-cover records and the knowledge of the processes linking weather and geomorphology at different time and spatial scales
The most used models in soil erosion simulation don’t include all the important soil erosion processes occurring in Mediterranean environments such as gully and stream erosion (Poesen and Hooke, 1997)
The reconstructed series of erosion values for Sele River Basin are considered a sufficiently homogeneous sequence, but the limit of our approach is the uncertainty in estimating the amount of exported sediment, which was involved in Net Erosion model (NER)-model calibration
Summary
Afterwards, monthly, seasonal and annual gross erosion rates were carried out within a down-scaling approach by using Sediment Delivery Ratio (SDR), on the contrary of up-scaling procedure commonly used by RUSLE (Renard et al, 1997). While NER model was largely determined by the required experimental data, the SDR model was constrained by weakness of the available data in Sele River Basin. Another important characteristic of the NER model was to consider the different erosion processes at different time scales (from monthly to annual).
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