Towards a dynamic monitoring system to assess status and spatiotemporal changes of soil erosion at European scale

Current EU/European estimates on soil loss by water and wind erosion are long-term averages performed with empirical models, which, in agricultural areas, are subject to huge uncertainties. Policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) would benefit from more up to-date and annual estimates. Improved estimates would contribute to developing a process-based model, which can incorporate management practices and their potential for reducing soil loss by water, and wind erosion in agricultural fields and facilitate the adoption of the best practices. Other processes such as tillage erosion or gullies can also be considered. Existing partially explicit parcel data (e.g. LPIS-GSA), data from the EU Land use and land cover survey (LUCAS) and the latest updates from the COPERNICUS platform could/should be used to improve current pan-European modelling frameworks.

Proposed activities should:

• Create a network of stakeholders to monitor soil loss by water and wind erosion across EU Member States and Horizon Europe Associated Countries in different crop conditions (including managed grasslands).
• Develop a monitoring scheme to implement, test and validate methods for assessing soil loss by soil erosion at European (continental) scale.
• Develop process-based models at continental scale, which consider soil erosion factors such as management practices applied by farmers, rainfall intensity, soil properties, topography and other biophysical attributes.
• Incorporate both field observations and latest state-of-the-art Copernicus products to better quantify and calibrate soil erosion factors.
• Quantify the impact of different management practices (e.g. cover crops, reduced tillage, plant residues, mulching, grass margins, crop rotation, terraces, etc.) on reducing soil erosion.
• Link those scientific outputs (e.g. improved soil erosion factors, impact of management practices) with the Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC) requirements of the CAP (e.g. impact of management practices such as cover crops or reduced tillage in CAP GAECs).
• Provide landowners and various stakeholders with best information on soil losses and with recommendations on the most suitable management practices to reduce soil loss.

Proposals should include a dedicated task and appropriate resources to collaborate and capitalise on activities and results from projects financed under other Work Programme topics of the Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’, in particular AI4SoilHealth, Benchmarks and Soil O-Live.

Cooperation with international networks in UNCCD, FAO Global Soil Partnership and the IPCC is encouraged to upscale the produced knowledge at global scale.

Proposals should demonstrate a route towards open access, longevity, sustainability and interoperability of knowledge and outputs through close collaboration with the EU Soil Observatory (EUSO) and the project SoilWISE. In particular, to ensure that relevant data, maps and information can potentially be used and displayed in the EUSO.