Soil Retention Degradation

Source: RUSLE2016 and EU C-factor (ESDAC) in the EU, calibrated R x K x LS x C elsewhere; WWF TEOW biomes; GloREDa/ESDAC erosivity; GloSEM land-use trend Year: 2016 Category: Scenario Coverage: Global: RUSLE2016 in the EU, a calibrated method elsewhere. No data on 1.25 % of cells (see below). Format: Raster grid (COG), 1/40 degree (~2.8 km) Used in risk analysis: Yes. It is the present-day level of the Soil and sediment retention row in Resilience, and it gates the Erosion control row of Enabling services on Sites & territories.

What it shows

This layer shows how degraded soil and sediment retention is today, in points. It compares the water erosion of each cell with the erosion the same cell would have under the natural cover of its WWF biome, with today's climate.

Resilience reads it as the level of the Loss of soil and sediment retention row. It never competes with the shock layers: the projected change comes from the Soil protection shock layers.

How it is built

D = clip( (E − E_pristine) / (11 − E_pristine), 0, 1 ) × 100

• E is the water erosion in t/ha/yr. In the EU it is RUSLE2016. Elsewhere it is R x K x LS x C calibrated on RUSLE2016, with C from ESA CCI 2020 and the ESDAC C value of each land-cover class.
• E_pristine is the erosion under the natural cover of the cell's WWF biome, with today's climate. The cover factor it uses is the Soil Retention Natural Cover Factor layer.
• 11 t/ha/yr is the OECD boundary between moderate and severe erosion.

How to read it

0 points is the erosion under natural cover. 100 points is an erosion 11 t/ha/yr above it. Keep these limits in mind:

• Outside the EU the world method overestimates Scandinavia by a factor of 2 to 3 and underestimates Central Europe.
• The tropics and the deserts lie outside the calibration of the world method. GloSEM at 25 km is the only check there.
• No data is not zero. Where the erosion under natural cover already reaches 11 t/ha/yr, the scale is empty and the cell reads no data, never 0. This affects 1.25 % of cells, almost all outside the EU.

Risk analysis

A site is flagged on a dimension by combining a proximity trigger (this layer) with an activity trigger (the entity's ENCORE pressure/service). Proximity only → Potentially material; proximity and the matching ENCORE pressure/service is material → Very material; neither → Not material.

The layer clips its value at 100 points, so this zone rule sits at the very top of the scale. The layer definition does not state whether a value of exactly 100 counts as above it.

Source

RUSLE2016 and EU C-factor (Panagos et al. 2015, 2020, JRC/ESDAC) · Global soil erodibility (Panagos et al. 2024, JRC/ESDAC) · ESA CCI Land Cover 2020 (C3S) · WWF Terrestrial Ecoregions (Olson et al. 2001) · GMTED2010 (USGS) · GloREDa and projected rainfall erosivity, 19 GCMs (JRC/ESDAC) · GloSEM land-use trend (Borrelli et al. 2020).

The ESDAC datasets are under the ESDAC data licence (registration, no redistribution of the data). GMTED2010 is public domain. The licences of ESA CCI Land Cover and WWF Terrestrial Ecoregions are not confirmed.

Legend

Symbolised field: Soil retention degradation (points)

Generated from darwin/layers/layer-soil-retention-degradation-2024.toml and risk_indicator_pairs.toml (develop).