Climate Change Impacts on Soil Erosion: A High-Resolution Projection on Catchment Scale Until 2100

The aim of this study was to quantify the impact of climate change on soil loss at catchment scale at high temporal and spatial resolution. Simulations are performed for three example catchments in West, North and East Saxony/Germany. The study is based on the A1B IPCC-scenario and model outputs of four models: ECHAM4-OPYC3 (general circulation model), WETTREG (statistical downscaling climate model), METVER (hydrological model for calculating daily initial soil moisture) and EROSION 3D as a process-based soil erosion model. Simulations were run for measured and projected single rainstorm events at a temporal resolution of 5 min. Soil loss was simulated for two future periods from 2041 to 2050 and 2091 to 2100. Results were compared to simulated soil loss based on 10 years of measured climate data from 1989 to 2007. Expected changes in land use, soil management due to changed crop rotation and shifted harvest date are taken into account in scenario studies. The results of the simulations with EROSION 3D allow to quantify the impacts of climate change on erosion rates. The impact of the expected increase of precipitation intensities leads to a significant increase of soil loss by 2050 and a partly decrease by 2100. The impacts of land use, soil management and soil properties on soil loss are higher than the effects of changed precipitation patterns.