A standardized GIS‑based assessment of water erosion risk in UNESCO vineyard landscapes: insights from the Monferrato soil system (Piemonte, NW Italy)

Vineyards in Mediterranean and sub‑Alpine landscapes are sensitive systems, where water erosion directly threatens many essential soil functions. This is particularly critical in UNESCO‑listed vineyard regions, where long‑term soil sustainability underpins both agricultural productivity and cultural heritage preservation. We present VineRUGIS, a standardized, open‑source procedure designed to assess water erosion risk in vineyards through climatic, soil, topographic and remote‑sensing data. It aims to a reliable erosion risk appraisal in vineyard areas using only freely available information (e.g., Panagos et al., 2015; Regione Piemonte, 2025) or tools (e.g. Biddoccu et al., 2020), including an appraisal of uncertainty. This might help to reduce uncertainty on the actual role of vine cultivation on soil degradation (e.g. Pappalardo et al., 2019).
VineRUGIS is based on an enhanced implementation of the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) within a QGIS environment using the ORUSCAL tool (Biddoccu et al., 2020), developed to run RUSLE in woody crops. It is an evolution of an approach successfully implemented in olive growing areas in Southern Spain (Gómez et al., 2023) and pays particular attention to the spatially explicit parameterization of key parameters like topography, soil erodibility, vegetation cover and conservation practices. VineRUGIS maps these factors at vineyard‑plot scale by integrating Sentinel‑2 NDVI time series, high‑resolution digital elevation models and regional soil databases, allowing a realistic representation of soil–management interactions.
The methodology was applied to the Monferrato vineyard region (Piemonte, Italy), an UNESCO World Heritage landscape characterized by complex relief and long‑term viticultural use. A first regional appraisal assuming temporary cover‑crop management indicates that most vineyard experience low to moderate average erosion rates, despite relatively high slope gradients. This highlights the dominant buffering role of vegetation cover and the need to check presence, or not, of traditional soil conservation practices, such as terracing, in maintaining erosion rates close to soil formation thresholds. This communication will present the results of our analysis and discuss the usefulness of VineRUGIS as a soil‑oriented, reproducible and transferable procedure to support erosion risk assessment, soil function protection and adaptive management in vulnerable vineyard soil systems under increasing climatic variability.
References

1- Biddoccu et al., 2020. Evaluation of soil erosion risk and identification of soil cover and management factor (C) for RUSLE in European vineyards with different soil management. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iswcr.2020.07.003   
2- Gómez et al., 2023. Evaluation of erosion risk with stakeholders using RUSLE methodology and publicly available information in a large olive producing area in Southern Spain. Abstracts of Soil Erosion Research under a Changing Climate Symposium by ASABE. Aguadilla, Pto. Rico.
3- Panagos et al., 2015. Rainfall erosivity in Europe. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.01.00 
4- Pappalardo et al., 2019. Estimation of potential soil erosion in the Prosecco DOCG area  (NE Italy), toward a soil footprint of bottled  sparkling wine production in different land management scenarios. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210922   
5- Regione Piemonte. 2025. Geopiemonte. https://geoportale.igr.piemonte.it/cms/

Acknowledgements: Support from PID2023-146177OB-C21 and C22 funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and “ERDF A way of making Europe”, by “ERDF/EU”; Fondazione CRT - project “MeRAViP” (2022.1732); CNR Short Term Mobility Program – 2025 (STM 2025).