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Preventing and reversing soil degradation is essential to maintaining the ecosystem services provided by soils and guaranteeing food security. In addition to the scientific community, it is critical to engage multiple stakeholders to assess the degree of soil degradation and mitigation strategies' impact and meet the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, European Union's Common Agricultural Policy, and other national and international goals. A semi‐structured questionnaire was distributed across countries participating in the EU Horizon‐2020 “Transforming Unsustainable management of soils in key agricultural systems in E.U. and China. Developing an integrated platform of alternatives to reverse soil degradation (TUdi).” Using farmers' associations and educational institutions as an intermediate to distribute the questionnaires was an effective strategy for gathering a high number of responses. Results from 456 responses to the questionnaire showed that farm country, size, type of agriculture, and educational level of farm managers were significantly associated with the farmers' perception of soil degradation issues. Farm size and type of agriculture were also correlated with applying a nutrient management plan. The implications of the results for soil conservation measures are discussed. Additionally, we highlight the potential of projects such as TUdi for creating collaboration networks to drive widespread adoption by farmers of technologies to reverse the degradation of agricultural soils.

Preventing and reversing soil degradation is essential to maintaining the ecosystem services provided by soils and guaranteeing food security. In addition to the scientific community, it is critical to engage multiple stakeholders to assess the degree of soil degradation and mitigation strategies' impact and meet the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, European Union's Common Agricultural Policy, and other national and international goals. A semi-structured questionnaire was distributed across countries participating in the EU Horizon-2020 “Transforming Unsustainable management of soils in key agricultural systems in E.U. and China. Developing an integrated platform of alternatives to reverse soil degradation (TUdi).” Using farmers' associations and educational institutions as an intermediate to distribute the questionnaires was an effective strategy for gathering a high number of responses. Results from 456 responses to the questionnaire showed that farm country, size, type of agriculture, and educational level of farm managers were significantly associated with the farmers' perception of soil degradation issues. Farm size and type of agriculture were also correlated with applying a nutrient management plan. The implications of the results for soil conservation measures are discussed. Additionally, we highlight the potential of projects such as TUdi for creating collaboration networks to drive widespread adoption by farmers of technologies to reverse the degradation of agricultural soils.

Za Českou republiku máme to potěšení účastnit se mezinárodního projektu TUdi – Transformace neudržitelného managementu zemědělské půdy – vývoj integrované platformy pro ochranu půd před degradací. Projekt si klade za cíl napomoci ochraně zemědělské půdy před degradací zejména kvůli nevhodným způsobům jejího využívání. Na projektu se podílí výzkumná pracoviště z Rakouska, Velké Británie, Španělska, Itálie, Maďarska, Bulharska, České republiky, Nového Zélandu i Číny. Náš tým reprezentuje Stavební fakultu ČVUT v Praze, Katedru hydromeliorací a krajinného inženýrství.

Reinforcing the small water cycle is considered to be a holistic approach to both water resource and landscape management. In an agricultural landscape, this can be accomplished by incorporating agricultural conservation practices; their incorporation can reduce surface runoff, increase infiltration, and increase the water holding capacity of a soil. Some typical agricultural conservation practices include: conservation tillage, contour farming, residue incorporation, and reducing field sizes; these efforts aim to keep both water and soil in the landscape. The incorporation of such practices has been extensively studied over the last 40 years. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used to model two basins in the Czech Republic (one at the farm-scale and a second at the management-scale) to determine the effects of agriculture conservation practice adoption at each scale. We found that at the farm-scale, contour farming was the most effective practice at reinforcing the small water cycle, followed by residue incorporation. At the management-scale, we found that the widespread incorporation of agricultural conservation practices significantly reinforced the small water cycle, but the relative scale and spatial distribution of their incorporation were not reflected in the SWAT scenario analysis. Individual farmers should be incentivized to adopt agricultural conservation practices, as these practices can have great effects at the farm-scale. At the management-scale, the spatial distribution of agricultural conservation practice adoption was not significant in this study, implying that managers should incentivize any adoption of such practices and that the small water cycle would be reinforced regardless.

The Czech landscape has undergone various changes over the last 100 years and has been mainly adapted agriculturally for economic purposes. This has resulted, among other things, in reservoirs being clogged with sediment. The Vrchlice Reservoir was built in 1970 to supply drinking water for around 50,000 inhabitants, and increased sedimentation has been detected in the reservoir in recent years. Water erosion and sediment transport were modeled with WaTEM/SEDEM. Sediment volumes were measured in eight ponds across the watershed for calibration purposes. Modeled results from ponds in watersheds covered mostly with arable lands generally corresponded with the measured values. Although in forested watersheds, the measured sediment volumes greatly exceeded modeled sediment yields, indicating high uncertainty in using USLE-based models in non-agricultural watersheds. The modeled scenarios represented pre-Communist, Communist, and post-Communist eras. For these periods WaTEM/SEDEM was used to evaluate three isolated effects: the effects of various crops on arable lands, the effects of farmland fragmentation, and finally the effects of changes in land use. The change in crops proved to be an important factor causing high siltation rate (potential 23% reduction in sediment yield for historical periods), and land fragmentation played the second important role (potential 15% reduction in sediment yield can be reached by land fragmentation). Across all scenarios, the lowest sediment yield and reservoirs siltation rates were obtained from the pre-Communist and Communist crop share under current land use conditions, and current land use with farmland fragmentation implemented, as it was re-constructed for the pre-Communist era. This supports the idea that the introduction of green areas within arable lands are beneficial to the landscape and can help reduce soil erosion and reservoir siltation.

Although wheel tracks cover only a small portion of the surface of agricultural fields, their effect on surface runoff and sediment transport is substantial. Wheel tracks change the microrelief of the soil surface, and influence how the surface is further altered by rainfall and runoff. This study presents a plot-scale microrelief analysis of a tilled surface with wheel tracks under simulated rainfall. Digital elevation models of the microrelief with 1 cm spatial resolution were obtained using the Structure from Motion method. The random roughness, the structural connectivity, and functional connectivity were calculated for before-rainfall and after-rainfall soil surface conditions. The experiments were carried out on inclined, freshly-tilled plots (8 m long, 2 m wide). The wheel tracks were created by four passages of machinery in the slope direction (SWT) and in the contour-line direction (CWT). The experiments were compared to reference plots without wheel tracks (NWT). The wheel tracks increase water and sediment connectivity if they are oriented in slope-wise direction. Microrelief analysis shows that SWT drains water from the surrounding soil. The soil surface adjacent to SWT can also become more connected with the wheel track, due to changes in microrelief introduced by rainfall and runoff. The calculated higher connectivity in the SWT plot corresponded to the measured increased sediment loads. This suggests faster overland flow and therefore shorter flow pathways on the soil surface microrelief. CWT leads to a decrease in the water and sediment connectivity compared to the NWT and SWT plots. Although the surface runoff can overflow the CWT, the network of flow paths results in decreased flow velocity and a slower sediment transport rate. However, the CWT effect is not permanent, and declines as the wheel tracks become silted with the deposited sediment. It is shown that detailed microrelief data provide relevant information for a study of the changes in flow

Most studies that address the relationship between socio-economic characteristics and soil erosion focus on the effects of soil erosion on socio-economic conditions at different levels, from global to smallholder. Few, if any, efforts are made to address the influence of socio-economic variables on the soil erosion rate as an indicator of landscape degradation. The present study was carried out using spatial data from 402 catchments that cover Poland, to find out how socio-economic variables, which include area-weighted average income per capita (PLN km−2), area-weighted average gross domestic product (PLN km−2), population density (person km−2), and human development index can drive the soil erosion rate (kg ha−1 yr−1), along with annual precipitation, soil and geomorphological variables that include soil organic carbon content, soil water content, clay ratio, stream gradient, and terrain slope. The results showed that the soil erosion rate is indirectly driven by the socio-economic variables in the study catchments, as it is alleviated by increasing population density, the area-weighted average gross domestic product, and the human development index. Furthermore, analyzing the incremental relationship between soil erosion rate and the area-weighted average of socio-economic variables revealed that no uniform change can be observed in the relationship between the area-weighted average socio-economic variables and soil erosion in the study catchments.

Soil erosion is generally recognized as the dominant process of land degradation. The formation and expansion of gullies is often a highly significant process of soil erosion. However, our ability to assess and simulate gully erosion and its impacts remains very limited. This is especially so at regional to continental scales. As a result, gullying is often overlooked in policies and land and catchment management strategies. Nevertheless, significant progress has been made over the past decades. Based on a review of >590 scientific articles and policy documents, we provide a state-of-the-art on our ability to monitor, model and manage gully erosion at regional to continental scales. In this review we discuss the relevance and need of assessing gully erosion at regional to continental scales (Section 1); current methods to monitor gully erosion as well as pitfalls and opportunities to apply them at larger scales (section 2); field-based gully erosion research conducted in Europe and European Russia (section 3); model approaches to simulate gully erosion and its contribution to catchment sediment yields at large scales (section 4); data products that can be used for such simulations (section 5); and currently existing policy tools and needs to address the problem of gully erosion (section 6). Section 7 formulates a series of recommendations for further research and policy development, based on this review. While several of these sections have a strong focus on Europe, most of our findings and recommendations are of global significance.

For the Czech Republic to recover from the effects of past mismanagement, it is necessary to determine how its landscape management can be improved holistically by reinforcing the small water cycle. We conducted a scenario analysis across four time periods using SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) to determine the effects of land use, land management, and crop rotation shifts since the 1800s in what is now the Czech Republic. The 1852 and 1954 land-use scenarios behaved the most similarly hydrologically across all four scenarios, likely due to minimal landscape transformation and the fact that these two scenarios occur prior to the widespread incorporation of subsurface tile drainages across the landscape. Additionally, the crop rotation of 1920–1938 reinforces the small water cycle the most, while that of 1950–1989 reinforces the small water cycle the least. Diversified crop rotations should be incentivized to farmers, and increasing the areas of forest, brush, and permanent grassland should be prioritized to further reinforce the small water cycle. It is necessary to foster relationships and open communication between watershed managers, landowners, and scientists to improve the small water cycle and to pave the way for successful future hydrological modeling in the Czech Republic.

Este documento es la traducción al castellano de la versión original en inglés fruto de la colaboración entre el Grupo Operativo Nacional Cereal Agua (de la EIP-Agri) y el proyecto SHui (del programa H2020 de la Comisión Europea). El mismo proporciona una revisión integral de las Mejores Prácticas de Manejo (MPM) para el optimizar el uso sostenible de los recursos suelo y agua en los sistemas agrícolas dentro del contexto del proyecto SHui. Este documento, que además de la versión original inglesa ha sido traducido al español y al chino, podría utilizarse para: 1- Proporcionar a cualquier lector una visión general de la descripción técnica de las opciones disponibles de MPM para optimizar el uso sostenible de los recursos suelo y agua. 2- Identificar cómo se definen y se regulan las MPM en relación con los grandes instrumentos regulatorios, en particular la Política Agrícola Común (PAC), a fin de proporcionar orientación sobre escenarios en que se implementaran esas MPM, así como facilitar la formulación recomendaciones para su mejor implementación por diferentes agentes. 3- Proporcionar un marco común, tanto dentro del proyecto como para los usuarios externos, para la definición de MPM utilizando una terminología estandarizada, así como una evaluación de cómo algunos de los modelos hidrológicos más comunes pueden usarse, o no, para introducir el efecto de estas MPM sobre estudios de análisis de escenarios en los que se introduzcan algunas de estas prácticas.

This document provides a comprehensive review of Best Management Practices (BMPs) for optimized used soil and water in agricultural systems within the context of the SHui project. This document, which also has been translated into Spanish and Chinese could be use: 1- To provide to any reader an overview of the technical description of available options of BMPs for optimizing soil and water use. 2- To identify how BMPs are defined and requested in relation to large policy instruments, particularly the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), to provide guidance on simulated scenario as well as on recommendations for improvement to policy stakeholders. 3- To provide a common framework, within the project as well for external users, for the definition of BMPs using a standardize terminology, and an appraisal on how some of the most common hydrologic models can be used, or not, to introduce the effect of these BMPs on scenario analysis.