Post-fire soil erosion in Europe

Description

Annually, millions of hectares of land are affected by wildfires worldwide, disrupting ecosystems functioning by affecting on-site vegetation, soil, and above- and belowground biodiversity, but also triggering erosive off-site impacts such as water-bodies contamination or mudflows. Here, we present a soil erosion assessment following the 2017’s wildfires at the European scale, including an analysis of vegetation recovery and soil erosion mitigation potential. Results indicate a sharp increase in soil losses with 19.4 million Mg additional erosion in the first post-fire year when compared to unburned conditions. Over five years, 44 million Mg additional soil losses were estimated, and 46% of the burned area presented no signs of full recovery. Post-fire mitigation could attenuate these impacts by 63-77%, reducing soil erosion to background levels by the 4th post-fire year. Our insights may help identifying target policies to reduce land degradation, as identified in the European Union Soil, Forest, and Biodiversity strategies.

Contact

Email: ec-esdac (at) ec.europa.eu

Contributors

European Commission, Joint Research Centre

https://ec.europa.eu/info/departments/joint-research-centre

How to cite

European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) (2023): Post-fire soil erosion in Europe. European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) [Dataset] PID: http://data.europa.eu/89h/d8aa4cbc-161f-41d5-a078-4d7acb286ece

Keywords

Soil erosion

Data access

European Soil Data Centre 2.0: Soil data and knowledge in support of the EU policies

Use conditions: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Access conditions: Registration required

URL

Annually, millions of hectares of land are affected by wildfires worldwide, disrupting ecosystems functioning by affecting on-site vegetation, soil, and above- and belowground biodiversity, but also triggering erosive off-site impacts such as water-bodies contamination or mudflows. Here, we present a soil erosion assessment following the 2017’s wildfires at the European scale, including an analysis of vegetation recovery and soil erosion mitigation potential. Results indicate a sharp increase in soil losses with 19.4 million Mg additional erosion in the first post-fire year when compared to unburned conditions. Over five years, 44 million Mg additional soil losses were estimated, and 46% of the burned area presented no signs of full recovery. Post-fire mitigation could attenuate these impacts by 63-77%, reducing soil erosion to background levels by the 4th post-fire year. Our insights may help identifying target policies to reduce land degradation, as identified in the European Union Soil, Forest, and Biodiversity strategies.

Publications

Publication

European Soil Data Centre 2.0: Soil data and knowledge in support of the EU policies

Panagos, P., Van Liedekerke, M., Borrelli, P., Köninger, J., Ballabio, C., Orgiazzi, A., Lugato, E., Liakos, L., Hervas, J., Jones, A. Montanarella, L. 2022. European Soil Data Centre 2.0: Soil data and knowledge in support of the EU policies. European Journal of Soil Science, 73(6), e13315. DOI: 10.1111/ejss.13315

URL

Additional information

Published by: European Commission, Joint Research Centre
Created date: 2023-06-23
Modified date: 2023-06-23
Issued date: 2023-01-11
Landing page: https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/content/post-fire-soil-erosion-europe
Language(s): English
Data theme(s): Environment
Update frequency: never
Identifier: http://data.europa.eu/89h/d8aa4cbc-161f-41d5-a078-4d7acb286ece
Popularity