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Mapping monthly rainfall erosivity in Europe

Ballabio, Cristiano and Borrelli, Pasquale and Spinoni, Jonathan and Meusburger, Katrin and Michaelides, Silas and Beguería, Santiago and Klik, Andreas and Petan, Sašo and Janeček, Miloslav and Olsen, Preben and Aalto, Juha and Lakatos, Mónika and Rymszewicz, Anna and Dumitrescu, Alexandru and Perčec Tadić, Melita and Diodato, Nazzareno and Kostalova, Julia and Rousseva, Svetla and Banasik, Kazimierz and Alewell, Christine and Panagos, Panos. (2017) Mapping monthly rainfall erosivity in Europe. Science of the Total Environment, 579. pp. 1298-1315.

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Abstract

Rainfall erosivity as a dynamic factor of soil loss by water erosion is modelled intra-annually for the first time at European scale. The development of Rainfall Erosivity Database at European Scale (REDES) and its 2015 update with the extension to monthly component allowed to develop monthly and seasonal R-factor maps and assess rainfall erosivity both spatially and temporally. During winter months, significant rainfall erosivity is present only in part of the Mediterranean countries. A sudden increase of erosivity occurs in major part of European Union (except Mediterranean basin, western part of Britain and Ireland) in May and the highest values are registered during summer months. Starting from September, R-factor has a decreasing trend. The mean rainfall erosivity in summer is almost 4 times higher (315MJmmha-1h-1) compared to winter (87MJmmha-1h-1). The Cubist model has been selected among various statistical models to perform the spatial interpolation due to its excellent performance, ability to model non-linearity and interpretability. The monthly prediction is an order more difficult than the annual one as it is limited by the number of covariates and, for consistency, the sum of all months has to be close to annual erosivity. The performance of the Cubist models proved to be generally high, resulting in R2 values between 0.40 and 0.64 in cross-validation. The obtained months show an increasing trend of erosivity occurring from winter to summer starting from western to Eastern Europe. The maps also show a clear delineation of areas with different erosivity seasonal patterns, whose spatial outline was evidenced by cluster analysis. The monthly erosivity maps can be used to develop composite indicators that map both intra-annual variability and concentration of erosive events. Consequently, spatio-temporal mapping of rainfall erosivity permits to identify the months and the areas with highest risk of soil loss where conservation measures should be applied in different seasons of the year.
Faculties and Departments:05 Faculty of Science > Departement Umweltwissenschaften > Geowissenschaften > Umweltgeowissenschaften (Alewell)
UniBasel Contributors:Alewell, Christine and Borrelli, Pasquale and Di Bella, Katrin
Item Type:Article, refereed
Article Subtype:Research Article
Publisher:Elsevier
ISSN:0048-9697
e-ISSN:1879-1026
Note:Publication type according to Uni Basel Research Database: Journal article
Language:English
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edoc DOI:
Last Modified:10 Feb 2017 10:00
Deposited On:10 Feb 2017 10:00

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