EIONET 2010 Soil Erosion data collection

Panagos Panos

Outline

• Soil Erosion Collection - Why?

• Country participation – Overall Map

• Countries – PESERA model & EIONET data

• Conclusions

EU Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection adopted by the European Commission on the 22nd of September 2006

COMMUNICATION COM(2006) 231 on the

Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection

DIRECTIVE COM(2006) 232 establishing a

framework for the protection of soil and

amending Directive 2004/35/EC

IMPACT ASSESSMENT SEC(2006) 620 of the

Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection

http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

Policy & Soil Erosion (1/3)

Soil Biodiversity loss

Sealing

Erosion Decline of Soil Organic Matter

Salinization Compaction

Landslides Contamination

Soil Threats

4/22

Policy & Soil Erosion (2/3)

• Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)

Requirement to keep land in Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC), targeting soil erosion,……….

• Resource Efficiency

By 2020, the area of land in the EU that is subject to soil erosion of more than 10 tonnes per hectare per year should be reduced by at least 25%.

• Rio +20 Conference

Agreement of a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on Land and Soil: Zero Net Land Degradation .

• Danube Strategy…

Policy & Soil Erosion (3/3)

European Commission (EU funded soil related projects)

Data from specific in-house JRC actions (e.g. ESDB, SOTER)

Member States

EIONET, EEA, etc

Collaborative research (e.g. EuroGeoSurveys, FAO, ISRIC)

Data from related JRC and EC actions

(e.g. LUCAS, BIOSOIL)

Network of soil centres (e.g. ESBN)

European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC)

6/22

European Soil Data Centre

2 Indicators: Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) , Soil Erosion Soil Erosion (t/ha/y): Estimation of soil erosion loss expressed in tones per hectare per year (t/ha/y) ESDAC adopted a “light” data collection protocol

Approach: INSPIRE Grid format (Grid Cells of 1km x 1km)

Metadata: The Model used for estimation of soil erosion, the land use types covered.

Time: 2009 - 2010

Data collection Specifications

8 countries provided Complete datasets: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia

6 countries provided data that could not serve in a nation-wide comparison: France provided only classes of soil erosion risk; the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) provided a complete dataset in non-comparable measuring units; Ireland provided PESERA data itself and Denmark provided impossibly high data values; Norway and Estonia provided data for a limited spatial coverage.

8 countries have replied on the request: Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Turkey, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Sweden.

16 Countries didn’t reply at all

Erosion data collection: Participation

Erosion: A Snapshot of EIONET data

Country Number of 1km Cells

Area Coverage with erosion

Value

Average soil

erosion

Method and land use covered

No. % t/ha/y

Austria 83,338 97.6 0.66 Method: Combination of USLE and RUSLE Coverage: all land-cover types

Belgium 17,534 87.3 3.65 Method: RUSLE Coverage: all land-cover types (except for urban areas)

Bulgaria 102,443 91.2 1.88 Method: USLE Coverage: all land-cover types

Germany 168,359 46.6 1.39 Method: USLE Coverage: agricultural land

Italy 151,008 49.2 6.6 Method: RUSLE Coverage: 9 regions provided data using different rainfall erosivity estimation

Netherlands 36,560 94.7 0.25 Method: RUSLE Coverage: all land-cover types (except for urban areas)

Poland 220,090 70.1 1.47 Method: USLE Coverage: agricultural land

Slovakia 49,705 99.5 1.04 Method: USLE Coverage: all land-cover types

Soil Erosion EIONET Map

Panagos et al. (2013)

Policy Makers: According to the obtained results it is possible to define the soil erosion risk areas at European level

Limitations: Reproducibility: Difficult to run the model Technical: Fortran code Demanding: Too many input layers….

Data are freely available in ESDAC (350 data licenses have distributed

since 2005)

PESERA model

Input Data: Climate: Rainfall, Temperature, etc Soil: European Soil Database ver 2.0 Land cover: Corine Land Cover 1990 Topographic data: SRTM

Kirkby et al., (2008)

Austria

EIONET Model: Combination of USLE and RUSLE

Belgium

Data provider: governmental authorities of Flanders and Wallonia

EIONET Model: RUSLE

Bulgaria

Data provider: Executive Environment Agency

EIONET model: USLE using detailed national datasets as input

Germany

Data provider: Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt)

EIONET model: Modified USLE

Italy

EIONET: almost 50% of the country, covering 8 regions and 2 autonomous provinces (Trentino and Alto Adige)

Netherlands

EIONET Model: RULSE

Poland

Data provider: Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation -

State Research

Slovakia

EIONET model: USLE

EIONET vs. dataset of soil erosion rates based on plot measurements

EIONET mean values are much lower in Slovakia and Austria and slightly lower in Netherlands and Germany compared to the mean erosion based on plots There is a perfect correspondence of EIONET mean erosion values with mean erosion rate based on plots in Bulgaria and Poland EIONET mean values are much higher in Belgium and Italy compared to the mean erosion rates based on plots measurements

Cerdan et al., 2010

1. Difference in mapping procedures

2. Influence of slope and vegetation

3. Different input datasets and scale

4. ……………………………………………….

Possible reasons for different results between PESERA and EIONET-SOIL

Model used in EIONET: USLE or RUSLE. Fairly homogeneous as most of the countries applied those modeling approaches Even if large parts of Europe (Nordic countries, Mediterranean) are not represented in the EIONET-SOIL erosion map, the data represents the best, albeit still fragmented, picture that can be drawn based on national data with a satisfactory number of countries.

Conclusions (1/2)

The exercise of the EIONET data collection will validate the soil erosion estimates of a pan-European USLE (developed by JRC)

Conclusions (2/2)

Panos Panagos European Commission, JRC - Institute for Environment and Sustainability - Land Resource Management

EU SOIL PORTAL http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

Panos.panagos@jrc.ec.europa.eu

10 January 2013 24/22

Thank you for your attention