Distance, time and scale in soil erosion processes

This commentary brings together, as a virtual Special Issue, a number of recent papers in Earth Surface Processes and Landforms that are all related to issues of scale in soil erosion. Empirical concepts that were developed in the 1940s are now in need of re-thinking, and papers are increasingly exploring, through modelling and measurement, appropriate ways to recognize the mechanisms that connect processes across time and space scales. Issues include a more nuanced approach to selective transportation, responses to variability in surface and sub-surface conditions and the need to analyse measurements in ways that can be transferred between sites and storms. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.