Monitoring of Soil Erosion of Agricultural Land

#SDGAction42657

Description

Intro

Monitoring of Soil Erosion of Agricultural Land is a useful tool to combat soil erosion. The project serves to report, record and evaluate individual erosion events. The outputs of the analysis of the monitored events have wide applications in the public and also in the private sphere. In particular these are the basis for the effective design of anti-erosion measures and for the preparation of new policies in the field of soil protection.

Objective of the practice

Water erosion is one of the most widespread damaging and degrading process of agricultural land of the Czech Republic, followed by other processes reducing production and nonproduction soil capacity. To reduce a negative impact of the erosion on agricultural land a suitable agricultural practice should be applied. It is also necessary to have sufficient information about repeatedly affected locations. Consistent and well-targeted implementation of stricter soil protection management in problematic areas leads to eliminations of the damages caused by water erosion. These reasons required an innovative process named Monitoring of soil erosion of agricultural land followed by Solution for repeated soil erosion events.<br />
Within the framework of the project reports of erosion events are received and at sites of erosion events a field reconnaissance is carried out, including the photographic documentation. Following the results of the reconnaissance the information about erosion incident are recorded to the web portal of Monitoring of Soil Erosion of Agricultural Land. Based on the records the annual and final report contain analysis of characteristics of monitored erosion events, circumstances of their occurrence and their causes. After that appropriate measures to mitigate the negative effects of soil erosion are designed – at the level of individual events (detailed analyzes of the selected events) or the national level. The outcomes of the erosion impact assessment are passed on Ministry of Agriculture, which continues to work with them and takes them into account in the setting of the subsidy policy.

Partners

The project is primarily a result of cooperation between the state administration (State Land Office) and a non-profit research and educative organisation (Research institute for Soil and Water Conservation). The project is largely involved by landowners interested in soil protection as well as local administration.

Implementation of the Project/Activity

The web portal Monitoring of Soil Erosion of Agricultural Land was created by the order of Minister of Agriculture in 2012 to ensure protection of agricultural land against degradation due to soil erosion.
The portal is fully operational since 2013. The functioning of the project is based on cooperation between research and the state administration. The state administration has the role of an executor, the research side represents a professional quarantor.

Results/Outputs/Impacts

The main result of this project is nationwide data collection of erosion events which provides feedback of the effectiveness of control measures and are used to define measures for reduction of the negative effects of erosion events. Also it could be the basis for setting the subsidy policy.
Since the beginning of the project there has been monitored more than 1200 erosion events.

Further, since 2017 an assessment and recovery of repeated erosion events has been conducted. In case of identifying such a location, the impact of soil erosion control management will be assessed. In case that a farm management ensuring an adequate erosion control has not yet been applied, the degree of erosion risk in LPIS will be increased and area expanded. Thus, the stricter conditions for growing in respect of soil erosion unfavourable crops and using agrotechnical soil erosion control measures and practices will have to be respected.
In years 2017 and 2018 the degree of erosion risk in LPIS has been increased on about 1400 hectars of agricultural land.

For more results visit website me.vumop.cz.

Enabling factors and constraints

A very important factor is the cooperation of the state administration and the research. One side without the other could not work properly in this project.
Another important factor is the regional competence of the State Land Office through its branch offices spread throughout the territory of the Czech Republic. Authorized employee of the State Land Office working at localy relevant branch office consequently ensure a field reconnaissance and results are recorded via web site to the database.
And of course support from politicians is necessary.

Conclusions

The most important in implementing such project is the interest of politicians and of course the interest of landowners to protect the soil. It is also necessary to have a dense network of branch offices to record all the necessary information sufficient and fast.

Other sources of information

For more information, a detailed description of working methods and contacts visit the website https://me.vumop.cz

SDGS & Targets

Goal 15

Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss