Soil Erosion in a British Watershed under Climate Change as Predicted Using Convection-Permitting Regional Climate Projections

Climate change can lead to significant environmental and societal impacts; for example, through increases in the amount and intensity of rainfall with the associated possibility of flooding. Twenty-first-century climate change simulations for Great Britain reveal an increase in heavy precipitation that may lead to widespread soil loss by rising the likelihood of surface runoff. Here, hourly high-resolution rainfall projections from a 1.5 km ('convection-permitting') regional climate model are used to simulate the soil erosion response for two periods of the century (1996-2009 and a 13-year future period at similar to 2100) in the Rother catchment, West Sussex, England. Modeling soil erosion with EROSION 3D, we found a general increase in sediment production (off-site erosion) for the end of the century of about 43.2%, with a catchment-average increase from 0.176 to 0.252 t ha(-1) y(-1) and large differences between areas with diverse land use. These results highlight the effectiveness of using high-resolution rainfall projections to better account for spatial variability in the assessment of long-term soil erosion than other current methods.

Automated summary

This study used high-resolution rainfall projections to simulate soil erosion response in the Rother catchment in West Sussex, England. The results show that future soil loss is likely to increase and surface runoff is expected to rise, highlighting the effectiveness of using high-resolution rainfall projections for assessing spatial variability in soil erosion.