Assessing soil erosion in Europe based on data collected through a European network

AbstractThe EuropeanCommission Directorate-General for the Environment (DG Environment) and the EuropeanEnvironmental Agency (EEA) have identified soil organic matterconservation and mitigation of soil loss by erosionas priorities for the collection of policy-relevant soil data at the Europeanscale. In order to support EuropeanUnion (EU) soil managementpolicies, soil qualityindicators are required that can be applied using harmonized data for the EU Member States. In 2010, the EuropeanSoil Data Centre (ESDAC) of the EuropeanCommission conducted a project to collect data on soil erosionfrom national institutions in Europe, using the EuropeanEnvironment Information and Observation Network for soil (EIONET-SOIL). The aim of this paper is to present a selection of the results obtained for soil erosionfrom the participating countries. The data collected were compared with estimates of soil loss using the Pan- EuropeanSoil ErosionRisk Assessment (PESERA) model, and aggregated soil erosiondata fro...