Assessing soil erosion in Europe based on data collected through a European network

The European Commission Directorate-General for the Environment (DG Environment) and the European Environmental Agency (EEA) have identified soil organic matter conservation and mitigation of soil loss by erosion as priorities for the collection of policy-relevant soil data at the European scale. In order to support European Union (EU) soil management policies, soil quality indicators are required that can be applied using harmonized data for the EU Member States. In 2010, the European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC) of the European Commission conducted a project to collect data on soil erosion from national institutions in Europe, using the European Environment Information and Observation Network for soil (EIONET-SOIL). The aim of this paper is to present a selection of the results obtained for soil erosion from the participating countries. The data collected were compared with estimates of soil loss using the Pan-European Soil Erosion Risk Assessment (PESERA) model, and aggregated soil erosion data from pan-European experimental plot studies. The comparison focuses on eight countries for which complete soil erosion data have been received. Overall, the mean values of soil loss reported by the national institutes (EIONET-SOIL) are larger than the PESERA estimates, with the main differences being for sloping land (>2 degrees) and for the land cover type forest and heterogeneous agricultural [land cover types according to CORINE (coordination of information on the environment) Land Cover 2006].