Project description
Targeted strategies to combat soil erosion
Soil erosion poses a major threat to both agriculture and the environment. The use of modeling approaches is crucial in delivering insights into the impacts and tendencies of soil erosion and predicting the effects of climate and land use changes. In this context, the EU-funded iMPACt-erosion project will enhance the effectiveness and availability of quantitative methods for managing agricultural lands at the catchment scale. The project will accomplish this by developing a user-friendly soil erosion model, using a rigorous and multidisciplinary evaluation approach to increase the accuracy of predictions, and by identifying the key factors and areas most susceptible to soil erosion. This will result in more targeted and efficient mitigation strategies to combat soil erosion.
Objective
Soil erosion represents a serious challenge for agricultural production and for the environment. Soil erosion impacts, such as reduction of fertile soil, alteration of the carbon cycle and pollution and eutrophication of water bodies, represent a significant management concern for the European Union. Modelling approaches can deliver indicators on the state of soil erosion impacts and its trends, and scenarios in relation to climate and land use change. This can help define efficient and targeted mitigation strategies by identifying the long-term controlling factors and the areas where, and periods during which, soil is at high risk of erosion. However, to define such strategies, there remains a lack of modelling approaches a) able to provide with longer term baseline information which to measure the success or otherwise of mitigation strategies at the catchment scale and b) accessible and robust enough to be used, understood and trusted by users with more or less expertise, including researchers, land managers and policy makers. In response, this project will improve improve the robustness and accessibility of quantitative methods for supporting agricultural land management. The objectives of this project are: (i) to develop an accessible soil erosion model, iMPACt-erosion, to support agricultural land management in Europe at the catchment scale, (ii) to apply a robust and multi-disciplinary model evaluation approach to achieve greater confidence in the iMPACt-erosion model predictions and (iii) to identify the soil erosion controlling processes and vulnerable areas and periods to define targeted and effective mitigation strategies until 2100.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-AG-UN - HORIZON Unit GrantCoordinator
14005 Cordoba
Spain