Modelling the impact of regenerative agriculture on soil erosion and river water quality

Current UK policy encourages water companies and farmers to collaborate and uptake minimum tillage and cover crops to reduce soil erosion’s impact on the environment, field productivity, and raw drinking water quality. This provides an opportunity for soil erosion risk prediction models to be used as decision-support tools, such as the modified Morgan-Morgan-Finney model (mMMF) (Morgan & Duzant., 2008). It currently lacks parameters to predict the impact of cover crops and minimum tillage, an adapted temporal resolution to reflect the intra- and inter- annual variability of soil erosion risk, and field validation with water quality data. The aim of this study is to further improve the mMMF as a decision support tool for water companies and land managers to target management options to reduce runoff and control soil erosion on farm to improve water quality. To do so, cover crop and soil surface roughness parameters were obtained via field measurements and literature. Spatial and temporal trends in cover cropping windows were identified based on crop type from the Crop Map of England (CROME) dataset. The mMMF will be modified to a monthly time step, and the predicted results will be interpreted alongside turbidity and suspended solids data. The improved model could not only facilitate the implementation of cover crops and minimum tillage by farmers, but also help stakeholders better prioritize measures for soil and water conservation.