Mr. Richard Cruse, Iowa State University, United States of America. Global Symposium on Soil Erosion (GSER19), 15 - 17 May 2019 at FAO HQ.

1. Assessment & mapping soil
erosion: Does it tell our story?
Rick Cruse
Iowa State University
Dennis Flanagan
USDA Agricultural Research Service
National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory
1

2. What is our
goal?
2

3. Stop Soil Erosion,
Save Our Future
3

4. 4

5. 5
Soil Erosion
Food Security

6. Fischer, et al., 2002: Global agro-ecological assessment for agriculture in the 21st century: methodology and results. Research Report RR-02-02. ISBN
3-7045-0141-7., International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, 119 pp. [On line at
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/Papers/gaea.pdf] Cited in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group II, Ch. 5, p. 280.
Soil and Terrain Suitability Index (SI) for a Range of Rain-Fed Crops and
Pasture Types for the Current Climate
Terrain Suitability Index

7. IPCC Fourth Assessment Report Summary for Policy Makers

9. 1European Environment Agency. 2011. Mean surface temperatures in Europe 1850-2009, annual and by season.
http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/mean-surface-temperature-in-europe
Mean surface temperature in Europe 1850-2009, annual and by season1.

10. Water Scarcity Index =
Human Fresh Water Consumption
Renewable Fresh Water
Oki, Taikan and Shinjiro Kanae. 2006. Global hydrological cycles and
world water resources. Science. 313:1068-1072

11. Oki, Taikan and Shinjiro Kanae. 2006. Global hydrological cycles and world water
resources. Science. 313:1068-1072

12. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)/GRID-Arendal Maps and Graphics
Library, 2009].

13. Irrigation
• ~ 40% of world food comes from 18% of
world’s cropland1
1W Danielle Nierenberg, Linda Starke and Erik Assadourian. 2007
State of the World – 2006. World Watch Institute.

14. RUSLE-based Global Soil Erosion Modelling platform (GloSEM)
Methods ConclusionsIntro GloSEM Aim Results
5

15. Fischer, et al., 2002: Global agro-ecological assessment for agriculture in the 21st century: methodology and results. Research Report RR-02-02. ISBN
3-7045-0141-7., International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, 119 pp. [On line at
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/Papers/gaea.pdf] Cited in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group II, Ch. 5, p. 280.
Soil and Terrain Suitability Index (SI) for a Range of Rain-Fed Crops and
Pasture Types for the Current Climate
Terrain Suitability Index

16. Pasquale Borrelli et al. 2017. An assessment of the global impact of 21st century land use change on soil erosion.
Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02142-7
What are current soil erosion rate estimates?

17. NEXRAD
Precip
LiDAR
Elevation
gSSURGO
Soils
Field-scale
Land-use &
Management
Daily Erosion Project soil erosion estimation system
– remotely sensed inputs & electronic databases
Crop Growth Soil erosion
&
Water runoff

18. Daily Erosion Project
• Daily sheet and rill hillslope soil erosion estimates
• Option to temporally scale daily estimates for different time
periods (Days to Years)
• Small watershed resolution ~150 hillslope estimates
to get average for each watershed
• Watershed average size = 9,046 ha
• Option to scale to larger watersheds or geographical regions
• Inputs are georeferenced data layers archived for
repeated use
• Scenario
• Test different treatments

19. 1.0 mm
2.0 mm
4.0 mm
0.2 mm
0.5 mm
0.1 mm
mm

20. 6 mm
2 mm
1 mm
0.5
6 mm
2 mm
1 mm
0.5
6 mm
2 mm
1 mm
0.5
6 mm
2 mm
1 mm
0.5
67% of slopes ≥ 3%
47% of slopes ≥ 6% 31% of slopes ≥ 10%
Baseline
> 3%
> 6% > 10%

21. (mm)1.0
0.2
0.6

22. Concluding Thoughts
Agricultural
Demand
Resource
Demand
Resource
Degradation
&/or Depletion

23. 23