Spatial variation of soil erosion classification at regional scale: the case study of Apulia Region

Soil erosion is a natural process of soil material removal and transportation through the action of erosive agents such as water, wind, gravity, and this process is escalated by human disturbance. Erosion process occurs globally and causes economic losses, decrease productivity of topsoil and finally arises energy, food, and water security problems. This study assessed the soil erosion, via European metadata, and generated soil erosion hazard map for Apulia Region using a modified version of the revised universal soil loss equation model (RUSLE, 2015), which delivers improved estimates based on higher resolution (100 m compared to 1 km) peer-reviewed inputs of rainfall, soil, topography, land use and management from the year 2010. The Apulia Region was categorized into three different erosion hazard classes, low, moderate, and high using the classification proposed by Council of the European Union (EU) and using Panagos (2015) classification. The processing shows that using the classification proposed in EU, only 14% of Apulian crop land is classified with severe or moderate erosion problems, while the other classification show a much more serious and worrying picture and the 35% of the land falls within the class with severe or moderate erosion problems. The study revealed that majority of extremely vulnerable soil erosion areas in Panagos (2015) classification (>10 t ha⁻¹year⁻¹) belongs to Daunian Sub-Apennine and Murgia plateau area. The model can be used to predict the effect of a range of policy scenarios. It is also replicable, comparable and can be extended to model other regions.