iMPACt-erosion: A robust and accessible model for a long-term effective management of agricultural soil erosion

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 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 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, based on interactive Jupyter Notebooks, to support agricultural land management at the catchment scale, (ii) to apply a robust model evaluation based on the use of both long-term soil loss observations and global sensitivity analysis to achieve greater confidence in 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. We present the model and the first model evaluation results, which show that simulations are consistent with observed soil loss rates (estimated from both fallout radionuclides and tree mound measurements) in the last 60 years in olive orchard catchments in South Spain.