Spatio-temporal monitoring of soil erosion events

The monitoring of soil erosion events is crucial to adapt measures for farmers, support decision making and refining soil policies especially in the context of climate change. A precondition for an effective monitoring is the availability of a data base, which allows the calculation of indices representing the spatio-temporal dynamic of influencing factors like precipitation or soil coverage. On the example of a parcel in the Uckermark district situated in north-eastern Germany, we introduce a process chain, which aims at the localization of parcels characterized by a potentially high risk of soil erosion during sensitive crop growing periods. The algorithm couples phenological information with a satellite-based soil coverage indicator and a heavy rain event indicator. Since these data sets are country-wide available, any parcel in Germany can be in principle assessed regarding the historical and up-to-date situation. In doing so, known soil erosion events can be analyzed or parcels can be localized where soil erosion events occurred, occur or will occur very likely.