Soil Erosion Processes in European Vineyards: A Qualitative Comparison of Rainfall Simulation Measurements in Germany, Spain and France

Thomas Iserloh,Christophe Naisse,Xavier Morvan,Jesús Rodrigo Comino,Artemio Cerdà,José Ruiz Sinoga,Johannes Ries,Oumarou Malam Issa,Manuel Seeger,Teodoro Lasanta,María Ramos,José Arnáez,Massimo Prosdocimi,Marta Ruiz Colmenero,Saskia Keesstra,María Marqués,Ramón Bienes

doi:10.3390/hydrology3010006

Abstract

Small portable rainfall simulators are considered a useful tool to analyze soil erosion processes in cultivated lands. European research groups in Spain (Valencia, Malaga, Lleida, Madrid and La Rioja), France (Reims) and Germany (Trier) have used different rainfall simulators (varying in drop size distribution and fall velocities, kinetic energy, plot forms and sizes, and field of application) to study soil loss, surface flow, runoff and infiltration coefficients in different experimental plots (Valencia, Montes de Malaga, Penedes, Campo Real and La Rioja in Spain, Champagne in France and Mosel-Ruwer valley in Germany). The measurements and experiments developed by these research teams give an overview of the variety of methodologies used in rainfall simulations to study the problem of soil erosion and describe the erosion features in different climatic environments, management practices and soil types. The aims of this study are: (i) to investigate where, how and why researchers from different wine-growing regions applied rainfall simulations with successful results as a tool to measure soil erosion processes; (ii) to make a qualitative comparison about the general soil erosion processes in European terroirs; (iii) to demonstrate the importance of the development of standard method for measurement of soil erosion processes in vineyards, using rainfall simulators; and (iv) and to analyze the key factors that should be taken into account to carry out rainfall simulations. The rainfall simulations in all cases allowed infiltration capacity, susceptibility of the soil to detachment and generation of sediment loads to runoff to be determined. Despite using small plots, the experiments were useful to analyze the influence of soil cover to reduce soil erosion, to make comparisons between different locations, and to evaluate the influence of different soil characteristics. The comparative analysis of the studies performed in different study areas points out the need to define an operational methodology to carry out rainfall simulations, which allows us to obtain representative and comparable results and to avoid errors in the interpretation in order to achieve comparable information about runoff and soil loss.

Highlights

The concept of terroir defines a vineyard with particular regional vitivinicultural practices and identifiable bio-physical environmental conditions with direct influences on grape composition [1,2,3,4].Several authors evidenced the importance of vineyard degradation during the last few decades, induced by applying chemical weeding, seasonal intensive tillage, green pruning and the use of heavy machinery [5,6,7,8,9]
Rainfall simulations at the Ruwer-Mosel valley were applied to study soil erosion processes before, during and after the vintage in conventional vineyards
It is clear that the most important reason for this study is to demonstrate the necessity of a standard rainfall simulator and methodology

Summary

Introduction

Several authors evidenced the importance of vineyard degradation during the last few decades, induced by applying chemical weeding, seasonal intensive tillage, green pruning and the use of heavy machinery [5,6,7,8,9]. All these activities notably affect one of the most important components of the terroir: the soil. Vineyards are notably one of the land uses, in particular in Mediterranean environments, in which high erosion rates are being recorded [11]. There is a growing awareness of the need to avoid high soil erosion rates and to reduce the transfer of pollutants downstream [12,13]

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Results

Conclusion