Soil erosion in a British watershed under climate change as predicted using convection-permitting regional climate projections

Ciampalini, Rossano, Kendon, Elizabeth J., Constantine, José A., Schindewolf, Marcus and Hall, Ian R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6960-1419 2023. Soil erosion in a British watershed under climate change as predicted using convection-permitting regional climate projections. Geosciences 13 (9) , 261. 10.3390/geosciences13090261

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Abstract

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 ~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.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Earth and Environmental Sciences
Publisher:	MDPI
ISSN:	2076-3263
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	1 September 2023
Date of Acceptance:	8 August 2023
Last Modified:	09 Sep 2023 19:34
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/162179

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