Nejc Bezak (Author), Pasquale Borrelli (Author), Panos Panagos (Author)

Abstract

Soil loss by water erosion is a major land degradation processes that can locally reduce crop productivity and cause off-site negative effects such as siltation, eutrophication of waterways, flooding and terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity loss. The major driver of water erosion is the erosive power of rainfall. Using the detailed erosive events of the Rainfall Erosivity Database at European Scale (REDES), we study the characteristics and patterns of rainfall erosivity in Europe introducing the Rainfall Erosivity Synchrony Scale (Rsync). Rsync expresses the maximum radius in kilometers around a given meteorological station within which at least half of the other meteorological stations in the database also detect an erosive event. In this study we correlate the Rsync and the annual erosivity with annual number of thunderstorm days, convective and large-scale precipitation and multiple geo-morphological features such as topographic position index and terrain ruggedness index. Our analysis shows an inverse relationship between the Rsync and rainfall erosivity values in Europe. Different spatial patterns of synchrony scale are detected in Europe, which enables us to delineate areas where severe soil erosion can simultaneously occur at larger scales, e.g., large sectors of Italy, Spain, Croatia and Slovenia. Furthermore, we observe a tendency of the Rsync to decrease with convective precipitation, annual number of thunderstorm days and increase with the large-scale precipitation. On the contrary, annual rainfall erosivity increases with convective precipitation and annual number of thunderstorm days and decreases with large-scale precipitation.

Keywords

hidrologija;sočasnost nastopa;Evropa;REDES;erozivnost padavin;erozija tal;synchrony scale;Europe;rainfall erosivity;

Data

Language: English
Year of publishing:
Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
Organization: UL FGG - Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering
UDC: 556.1
COBISS: 41266435 Link will open in a new window
ISSN: 0341-8162
Parent publication: Catena
Views: 348
Downloads: 85
Average score: 0 (0 votes)
Metadata: JSON JSON-RDF JSON-LD TURTLE N-TRIPLES XML RDFA MICRODATA DC-XML DC-RDF RDF

Other data

Secondary language: Slovenian
Secondary keywords: hidrologija;sočasnost nastopa;Evropa;REDES;erozivnost padavin;erozija tal;
Type (COBISS): Scientific work
Embargo end date (OpenAIRE): 2024-03-04
Pages: str. 1-9
Volume: ǂLetn. ǂ198
Issue: ǂšt. ǂ105060
Chronology: mar. 2021
DOI: 10.1016/j.catena.2020.105060
ID: 12612112