Land degradation is the persistent reduction in the capacity of the land to support human and other life on Earth (IPBES, 2018). This process jeopardizes the provision of ecosystem services. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15, ‘Life on Land’, includes efforts to sustainably manage and recover natural ecosystems and restore degraded land and soil.
Under the umbrella of SDG 15, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has defined an indicator framework to monitor progress toward ‘land degradation neutrality’. We evaluated the performance of SDG 15.3.1, focusing on “the proportion of land that is degraded over the total land area” for the European Union (EU) using the TRENDS.EARTH software.
We assessed the impact of alternative datasets at different spatial resolutions and policy-relevant data sources for land cover (CORINE) and soil organic carbon (SOC) stock (LUCAS). Our hypothesis was that higher spatial resolution sub-indicators would better identify the total share of degraded land and provide a clearer picture of the extent of degraded land for the target period. Land productivity trajectories were adjusted using the Water Use Efficiency index that revealed the high share of improving land reported by the NDVI trends. Therefore, it is advisable to use always a climate correction to assess land productivity trends. Replacing default datasets with alternative sub-indicators allowed the detection of 25–40% more degraded areas. Additionally, the integration with a combined proxy of land degradation (soil erosion >10 Mg ha-1 yr-1, and SOC concentration <1%) identified an additional 50% land degradation and revealed that a large extent of the EU needs restoration measures.
The data presented here correspond to some of the maps that are present in the peer-reviewed publication entitled "Evaluation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 15.3.1 indicator of land degradation in the European Union" in Land Degradation & Development, Volume 34, Issue 1Jan 2023Pagesi, 1-295, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ldr.4457
There are 9 maps.
The SOCERO1.tif map (figure 2c in the paper) represents the convergence of evidence between areas affected by extreme soil loss (>10 Mg ha-1 yr-1) and extremely low SOC content (<1%). It can be considered as the main outcome of the study.
The tiff map presented has a 100m resolution.
Pixel values are:
- 0: for soil loss <10 Mg ha-1 yr-1 and SOC content >1%
- 1: where soil loss >10 Mg ha-1 yr-1 or SOC content <1%
- 2: where soil loss >10 Mg ha-1 yr-1 and SOC content <1%
Soil erosion by water can heavily alter soils in agricultural ecosystems, and it is recognized as a major land degradation pathway , therefore we used as source of soil erosion the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) modelled soil erosion rates, source https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/content/soil-erosion-water-rusle2015 and for the Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) content (<1%) was derived from the SOC concentration of Land Use and Coverage Area frame Survey LUCAS https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/content/chemical-properties-european-scale-based-lucas-topsoil-data, the two layers were combined in a single layer defining thus the indicator “SOC + Erosion” as a proxy for degraded land. No data due to urban and inland water are left blank.
MODIS WUE data are masked for urban areas and water bodies; CORINE CLC land cover 2000 and 2018 are reclassified into the Trends.earth software. This operation can generate 'no data'. LUCAS topsoil organic carbon stock were obtained by using the original raster file distributed by ESDAC, multiplied for the bulk density . The data can have small amount of "no data" for high altitude and near water bodies areas.
All sub-indicators displayed a good spatial coverage and the SDG 15.3.1 calculated has also a good spatial coverage and is suitable for global scale analysis, but might be not indicated for detail scale assessment
The dataset includes the two maps on which the SOCERO1.tif map is based (figures 2a and 2b in the paper)
- Erosion_10ha.tif (at 100m resolution) with values 1 where erosion > 10 Mg ha-1 yr-1
- SOC_less1%.tif (at 500m resolution) with values 1 where SOC content <1%
The dataset contains also 6 tiff maps corresponding to the 6 figures (a to f) of the figure-7.
The possible values are: -1 where 'degraded', 0 where 'stable', and 1 where 'improving'.
The resolution of these 6 maps is 130m
Some additional metadata:
- Geographical coverage: EU27
- Reference period for the data: both 2000-2015, 2000-2018
- Spatial reference: ETRS89_Lambert_Azimutal_Equal_Area
- Status of the dataset: final
- Keywords; separated by; : SDG 15.3.1;land degradation; land cover changes; drylands; erosion; soil organic carbon degradation
Disclaimer: Due to post-processing of the datasets, there might be slight differences in the area coverage at national scales between these data and the published version. In addition, as the Trends.earth tool delivered recently a newer version of the AGIS plugin, it might be that this led to slightly different results. For any issue please get in touch with ec-esdac@ec.europa.eu. |
Important Note: this is a only first attempt to assess Land Degradation for the EU-27, in the context of the UN SDG 15.3.1. As new data and new knowledge will become available, updates could be made to this current output.
