TY - JOUR

T1 - Comment on "Rainfall erosivity in Europe" by Panagos et al. (Sci. Total Environ., 511, 801-814, 2015)

AU - Auerswald, Karl

AU - Fiener, Peter

AU - Gomez, Jose A.

AU - Govers, Gerard

AU - Quinton, John N.

AU - Strauss, Peter

PY - 2015/11/1

Y1 - 2015/11/1

N2 - Recently a rainfall erosivity map has been published. We show that the values of this map contain considerable bias because (i) the temporal resolution of the rain data was insufficient, which likely underestimates rain erosivity by about 20%, (ii) no attempt had been included to account for the different time periods that were used for different countries, which can modify rain erosivity by more than 50%, (iii) and likely precipitation data had been used instead of rain data and thus rain erosivity is overestimated in areas with significant snowfall. Furthermore, the seasonal distribution of rain erosivity is not provided, which does not allow using the erosivity map for erosion prediction in many cases. Although a rain erosivity map for Europe would be highly desirable, we recommend using the national erosivity maps until these problems have been solved. Such maps are available for many European countries. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

AB - Recently a rainfall erosivity map has been published. We show that the values of this map contain considerable bias because (i) the temporal resolution of the rain data was insufficient, which likely underestimates rain erosivity by about 20%, (ii) no attempt had been included to account for the different time periods that were used for different countries, which can modify rain erosivity by more than 50%, (iii) and likely precipitation data had been used instead of rain data and thus rain erosivity is overestimated in areas with significant snowfall. Furthermore, the seasonal distribution of rain erosivity is not provided, which does not allow using the erosivity map for erosion prediction in many cases. Although a rain erosivity map for Europe would be highly desirable, we recommend using the national erosivity maps until these problems have been solved. Such maps are available for many European countries. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

KW - Rain

KW - R factor

KW - Soil erosion

KW - SOIL LOSS EQUATION

KW - MAP

KW - BAVARIA

U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.05.019

DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.05.019

M3 - Editorial

VL - 532

SP - 849

EP - 852

JO - Science of the Total Environment

JF - Science of the Total Environment

SN - 0048-9697

ER -