Evaluation of soil erosion risk and identification of soil cover and management factor (C) for RUSLE in European vineyards with different soil management

Vineyards present some of the largest erosion rates reported in agricultural areas in Europe, although there is a large variability in reported rates. This is because under the same land use, erosional processes are highly affected by climate, soil, topography and by the adopted soil management practices (SMP). The choice of SMP to be adopted is the main way for farmers to control soil erosion and at the same time to increase other ecosystem services in vineyards. The Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) is commonly adopted to estimate rates of water erosion on cropland under different forms of land use and management. The identification of a proper value of the soil cover and management (C) factor is essential to obtain a reliable evaluation of soil erosion rates in a given area and for a specific land use. This paper presents the preliminary version of the analysis of erosion risk in vineyards, using ORUSCAL, which is a simplified erosion prediction model that is designed to calibrate RUSLE for a range of management conditions in vineyards with limited datasets. The analysis has been carried out in three wine-growing areas in Spain, Italy and Austria. The aim was to provide estimations of C-values and to explore the erosion risk under different SMP in winegrowing areas across Europe.