Monthly erosive storm hazard within river basins of the Campania Region, Southern Italy

Based on a parsimonious interpretation of rainstorm processes, the SISEM model – comparable with the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation – was developed in this work to generate erosivity mean values at different time-aggregation scales (monthly, seasonal and yearly). Following this idea, erosive rainfalls are eligible to be grouped in some vulnerable periods of the year (e.g., cropping months or seasons), or for some particularly stormy interdecadal periods. The test area was conducted for the Campania Region and surrounding Italian areas, where 110 digital stations with sufficient data derived from Department of Civil Protection of Campania Region. The model was evaluated against (R)USLE estimates both on calibration and validation datasets using a range of R modules–based performance statistics. Results show that highly hazardous rainfall erosivity is expected in autumn season, with a more random occurrence in other periods of the year. Taking SISEM model very few and easy retrievable data into account, it is desirable to extend its use of sites without any pluviograph data for time and spatial interpolation purposes over peninsular Central and Southern Italy.