Soil erosion is a major threat to the global soil functions that sustain life on land, and substantial research has been devoted to understanding, predicting, and controlling erosion processes. Yet there appears to be a discrepancy between the (perceived) gravity of soil erosion and recent scientific activity in the field. Models have become the primary epistemic tool in erosion science, despite a continued overreliance on 1960s empirics now masked by computational prowess. Meanwhile, we struggle to measure lateral soil fluxes beyond small plots, and implementing erosion control measures remains a major societal challenge. These issues point towards a reliability crisis that, left unchecked, risks eroding the credibility of the research field.
In this session, we want to co-create future(s) for erosion science by rethinking where we want to go as a scientific field and how we get there through the choices we make today. As such, we welcome a wide range of contributions, from critical perspectives to applied research. We invite submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following subjects:
- New or improved approaches to measuring and modelling soil erosion;
- Impacts of erosion on soil health, soil functions and ecosystem services;
- Interactions between climate change, land-use change, and soil change in shaping soil erosion and its dynamics;
- Evidence-based soil conservation—particularly approaches that integrate soil conservation into broader landscape management perspective;
- Translating (uncertain) modelled erosion rates into risk assessments for policymakers and managers;
- New or improved methods for calibrating and testing soil erosion models—particularly approaches that increase model falsifiability and/or that report case studies of model invalidation (if you have “bad” results, we want to hear about it!)
- We expressly encourage contributions that provide broader, critical perspectives on soil-erosion research and point towards a direction forward.
Gerard Govers