Rainfall erosivity in Europe

Rainfall is one the main drivers of soil erosion. The erosive force of rainfall is expressed as rainfall erosivity. Rainfall erosivity considers the rainfall amount and intensity, and is most commonly expressed as the R-factor in the USLE model and its revised version, RUSLE. At national and contine...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Science of the total environment 2015-04, Vol.511, p.801-814
Main Authors: Panagos, Panos, Ballabio, Cristiano, Borrelli, Pasquale, Meusburger, Katrin, Klik, Andreas, Rousseva, Svetla, Tadić, Melita Perčec, Michaelides, Silas, Hrabalíková, Michaela, Olsen, Preben, Aalto, Juha, Lakatos, Mónika, Rymszewicz, Anna, Dumitrescu, Alexandru, Beguería, Santiago, Alewell, Christine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Density
Erosivity density
Mathematical models
Modelling
Precipitation
R-factor
Rainfall
Rainfall intensity
Rainstorm
Regression
RUSLE
Soil erosion
Stations
Temporal resolution
Time series
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Summary:Rainfall is one the main drivers of soil erosion. The erosive force of rainfall is expressed as rainfall erosivity. Rainfall erosivity considers the rainfall amount and intensity, and is most commonly expressed as the R-factor in the USLE model and its revised version, RUSLE. At national and continental levels, the scarce availability of data obliges soil erosion modellers to estimate this factor based on rainfall data with only low temporal resolution (daily, monthly, annual averages). The purpose of this study is to assess rainfall erosivity in Europe in the form of the RUSLE R-factor, based on the best available datasets. Data have been collected from 1541 precipitation stations in all European Union (EU) Member States and Switzerland, with temporal resolutions of 5 to 60min. The R-factor values calculated from precipitation data of different temporal resolutions were normalised to R-factor values with temporal resolutions of 30min using linear regression functions. Precipitation time series ranged from a minimum of 5years to a maximum of 40years. The average time series per precipitation station is around 17.1years, the most datasets including the first decade of the 21st century. Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) has been used to interpolate the R-factor station values to a European rainfall erosivity map at 1km resolution. The covariates used for the R-factor interpolation were climatic data (total precipitation, seasonal precipitation, precipitation of driest/wettest months, average temperature), elevation and latitude/longitude. The mean R-factor for the EU plus Switzerland is 722MJmmha−1h−1yr−1, with the highest values (>1000MJmmha−1h−1yr−1) in the Mediterranean and alpine regions and the lowest (
ISSN:0048-9697
1879-1026
DOI:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.01.008