A European database of soil piping-related features: a major step towards producing a piping erosion susceptibility map of Europe

A better understanding of soil erosion is not possible without including subsurface erosion. Soil piping may significantly contribute to the overall erosion problem in a given area and may therefore change the conditions and methods for controlling soil degradation. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify regionally and globally sites where soil piping occurs which then may require a change of the strategies to control soil erosion. In this project, we are constructing the very first data-driven piping erosion susceptibility map of Europe. The crucial point is to identify piping-affected areas by mapping the soil piping-related features, i.e. pipe roof collapses (PCs) and pipe outlets in the European Union and the UK. Mapping is based on an in-depth literature review in combination with detailed mapping using Google Earth imagery, and LiDAR data (if available). The database currently consists of 6841 piping-related features (6171 PCs, and 670 outlets), among which the location of 88% features is certain (within a resolution of 25 m). Almost 28% (1889 features) were located based on detailed fieldwork, 25% (1726) were extracted from published papers, and 47% based on a detailed analysis of Google Earth imagery and LiDAR data (19% and 28%, respectively). This database is currently used to construct the very first data-driven piping erosion susceptibility map of Europe.

 

This research is part of the project “Building excellence in research of human-environmental systems with geospatial and Earth observation technologies” that received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 952327.