Post-fire soil erosion in Europe

This dataset contains the soil erosion estimations resulting of a study that mapped post-fire soil erosion in EU and UK following the 2017’s wildfires during 5 post-fire years. Five maps (GeoTIFF) and their corresponding dataframe (Rdata) are provided at 25m resolution, from year 1 (2017) to year 5 (2021).
Post-fire soil erosion in Europe
Resource Type: 
Datasets
Soil Threats Data
Registration is requested: 
Yes
Year: 
2023
Themes: 
Erosion by water
Erosion by water›Post-fire Soil Erosion
Keywords: 
Soil Erosion

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.

Title: Post-fire soil erosion in Europe
Description: This dataset contains the soil erosion estimations resulting of a study that mapped post-fire soil erosion in EU and UK following the 2017’s wildfires during 5 post-fire years. Five maps (GeoTIFF) and their corresponding dataframe (Rdata) are provided at 25m resolution, from year 1 (2017) to year 5 (2021). The maps express ‘predicted soil losses’ (A, Mg ha-1 y-1).
Pixel size: 25m
Measurement Unit: t (Mg) ha-1 yr-1
Projection: EPSG 3035: ETRS89-extended / LAEA Europe
Temporal coverage:  2017-2021
More information:  Post fire soil erosion

Reference: Vieira, D.C.S., Borrelli, P., Jahanianfard, D., Benali, A., Scarpa, S. and Panagos, P., 2023. Wildfires in Europe: Burned soils require attention. Environmental research, 217, Art. No. 114936.

Post-fire soil erosion in Europe

Post-fire soil erosion estimations averaged by 25 × 25 km grid for EU and UK, for the first year following the 2017 wildfires

 

Post-fire soil erosion in Europe

Methodological approach

Post-fire soil erosion in Europe

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Notification:

  1. The data provided has been prepared for use by internal research activities in the Joint Research Centre (JRC) Ispra. This work has been done in the context of the Working group of Soil Erosion of the EU Soil Observatory addressing the soil erosion in relation to land degradation, climate change and food security.
  2. The data are the result of JRC research activities and are primarily made available for further research. The JRC does not accept any liability whatsoever for any error, missing data or omission in the data, or for any loss or damage arising from its use. The JRC agrees to provide the data free of charge but is not bound to justify the content and values contained in the databases.
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Reference of source (Citations) :

Vieira, D.C.S., Borrelli, P., Jahanianfard, D., Benali, A., Scarpa, S. and Panagos, P., 2023. Wildfires in Europe: Burned soils require attention. Environmental research, 217, Art. No. 114936.

When making reference to the ESDAC

  • 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
  • Panagos P., Van Liedekerke M., Jones A., Montanarella L., “European Soil Data Centre: Response to European policy support and public data requirements”; (2012) Land Use Policy, 29 (2), pp. 329-338. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2011.07.003
  • European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC), esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu, European Commission, Joint Research Centre