Splashability – missing element

Water erosion is considered one of the most critical forms of land degradation, which was estimated to cover 24% of European land and 32% of agricultural land. Widespread land deforestation practices, overgrazing by livestock, inappropriate cultivation and agricultural practices, and climate change (including torrential rains) are the main factors influencing the acceleration of erosion processes, for which the affected land is projected to increase by further 25% EU-wide by 2050.

Researchers emphasise the need to establish an EU erosion monitoring network, which can contribute to more accurate large-scale empirical modelling and improve the implementation of appropriate soil protection policies. The literature also highlights the need for improve process-based modelling at the field scale to obtain more precise recommendations for land management and erosion mitigation strategies.

The predictive value of existing models (despite the efforts of many researchers) is still limited, especially at the continental scale, as systematic knowledge of local soil (and climate) parameters is often not available. On the other hand, scaling in time and space is currently a key challenge for physical models. These models also suffer from the disadvantage of complexity and significant input data requirements.

The aim of our proposed research is to determine a parameter (or group of parameters) from of which the exact susceptibility of soil to splash erosion will be determined for 100 Central Europe soils. The splash phenomenon is the first stage of soil water erosion, and while its subsequent forms (e.g. surface, rill or gully erosion) can only occur under specific conditions (e.g. high rainfall intensity or suitable terrain), splash erosion always occurs. This is because it is responsible for the moment of interaction between the raindrop and the soil surface, and depending on the intensity of rainfall, this phenomenon can initiate further forms of water erosion at different scales. Therefore, obtaining detailed information on the nature of the splash phenomenon is crucial to understanding and fully describing water erosion. Recognising the mechanisms of this process at all stages can contribute to the development of effective methods to reduce the degradation of the most fertile top layer of the soil profile. Based on our experience in describing the splash erosion, we firmly believe that determination of the susceptibility of soils to the splash phenomenon (determination of the splashability factor) will contribute to the development of physical models by providing data for calibration and validation, and consequently, also reducing the uncertainty of these models.

The study was partially funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, in the frame of project no. 2024/55/B/ST10/01326.