Soil Erosion in the United States. Present and Future (2020-2050)

TL;DR

This study predicts future soil erosion rates in the US under various climate and land use scenarios using high-resolution modeling, highlighting regional shifts and increases in erosion by 2050.

Contribution

It introduces a high-resolution (30-m) field-scale erosion model integrating satellite data and climate scenarios to forecast future soil erosion across the US.

Findings

Soil erosion rates are projected to increase by 8-21% by 2050.

Erosion hotspots are expected to shift from the south to eastern and northeastern US.

Current conservation practices may be insufficient under future climate and land use changes.

Abstract

Soil erosion is a significant threat to the environment and long-term land management around the world. Accelerated soil erosion by human activities inflicts extreme changes in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, which is not fully surveyed/predicted for the present and probable future at field-scales (30-m). Here, we estimate/predict soil erosion rates by water erosion, (sheet and rill erosion), using three alternative (2.6, 4.5, and 8.5) Shared Socioeconomic Pathway and Representative Concentration Pathway (SSP-RCP) scenarios across the contiguous United States. Field Scale Soil Erosion Model (FSSLM) estimations rely on a high resolution (30-m) G2 erosion model integrated by satellite- and imagery-based estimations of land use and land cover (LULC), gauge observations of long-term precipitation, and scenarios of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). The baseline model (2020) estimates soil erosion rates of 2.32 Mg ha 1 yr 1 with current agricultural conservation practices (CPs). Future scenarios with current CPs indicate an increase between 8% to 21% under different combinations of SSP-RCP scenarios of climate and LULC changes. The soil erosion forecast for 2050 suggests that all the climate and LULC scenarios indicate either an increase in extreme events or a change in the spatial location of extremes largely from the southern to the eastern and northeastern regions of the United States.