Objective
Predicting the erosive rainstorms (3-4 per year) that cause 70-80% of annual soil erosion is the main objective. The operative objectives are:
1. Description of the the within-storm dynamics of soil surface roughness, sealing, soil aggregates and infiltration;
2. Prediction of rill and ephemeral gully generation and developement during erosive storms;
3. Production of a generator of synthetic erosive rainstorms able to give usefull insight of the relevant within-storm intensity pattern; 4. Developement of a fully dynamic model taking into account points 1,2 and 3 .
The research develops along 4 work tasks, namely:
l) within-storm changes in infiltration and soil surface characteristics; 2) development and evolution of ephemeral gullies;
3) modifications of an existing rainstorm generator;
4) simulation and validation of a within-storm soil erosion model (EUROWISE), coupled with a GIS/DTM.
Laboratory and field experiments fulfill 1 and 2. Field inventory of ephemeral gullies allows a GIS/DTM to be developed for the specific purpose of locating gullies. The algorithms for infiltration and soil surface modification within the studied storm, and for ephemeral gully generation and development will be validated in several field experiments.
The rainstorm generator (RAINGEN2) produces synthetic rains of given intensity, intensity pattern, time to peak and other rain characteristics, taking into account the seasonal dependence of rainstorm characteristics for the same location. This will allow different climatic scenarios to be tested.
A new model (EUROWISE), derived from an existing model, will incorporate the new algorithms and be linked to the GIS/DTM specifically developed. Several validation for EUROWISE/RAINGEN2 will be made with data spanning over lO to 20 years and collected in monitored plots and small chatchments in Europe.
The partnership is represented by 8 partners from 6 EU-Countries: Austria, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom. The project is coordinated by the Italian National Research Council (CNR).
Fields of science
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
50144 FIRENZE
Italy