The new assessment of soil loss by water erosion in Europe. Panagos P. et al., 2015 Environmental Science & Policy 54, 438–447—A response

Robert Evans and John Boardman

Environmental Science & Policy, 2016, vol. 58, issue C, 11-15

Abstract: We respond to an article by Panagos et al.—‘The new assessment of soil loss by water erosion in Europe’ in Environ. Sci. Policy, 2015, 54, 438–447. It is aimed at helping policy makers make better decisions. The assessment uses a Geographical Information Systems approach based on the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation. RUSLE is based on data gained from plot experiments. The authors assume RUSLE is the only way to assess erosion and ignore critiques of erosion models and other ways of assessing erosion. A different way of assessing water erosion, based on collecting information on extent, frequency and rates, mainly from farmers’ fields but also grazed uplands, has been carried out over recent decades in Britain. The two ways of assessing erosion, one largely theoretical, the other based on reality, evolved in response to particular situations. However, they should relate well to each other. We show that the model is inappropriate to assess soil loss by water erosion in Britain, not only for agricultural land but also for uncultivated land. Predicted high rates of erosion do not relate well to where erosion actually occurs and are too high, and the model takes no account of the spatial extent of erosion on the ground. In other words, the model does not reflect reality. Policy decisions should not be taken based on such a model. Erosion must be assessed in a better way with a large field-based element.

Keywords: Soil loss; Water erosion; RUSLE; Field-based assessment; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901115301283
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enscpo:v:58:y:2016:i:c:p:11-15

DOI: 10.1016/j.envsci.2015.12.013

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental Science & Policy is currently edited by M. Beniston

More articles in Environmental Science & Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().