SED-RUNS  -  Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF) EF-CAR, 2020

Soil erosion by water is one of the most widespread forms of soil degradation in Europe, where the relevant annual cost for agricultural productivity loss to the agricultural sector is estimated to be around 295 million euros (Panagos et al., 2018). Under global change, soil erosion due to rainfall is dramatically increasing, for the most part because of an increasing of the frequency of extreme, localised events.

This MSCA - Horizon 2020 project focuses on understanding and quantifying extreme rainfall effects on soil erosion by means of ground-based weather-radar observations and hydrological modelling at regional scale (namely in Tuscany, central Italy).

The approach, based on statistical analysis and modelling methods, aims to: 1) Quantifying, over the last decade, the spatio-temporal distribution of extreme rainfalls / runoff and soil erosion, 2) Building a platform to model runoff and soil erosion for extreme events, 3) Simulating in real-time runoff and soil erosion as a precursor of for a regional-warning-system for extreme weather events.

Rainfall data will be provided by the national and regional institutions such as LaMMA Consortium (Tuscany Meteorological Agency) and the “Italian Civil Protection”, whose radar dataset of the national network (DPCN) covers the 2010–2020 period, with a spatial resolution of 1 km in a 10-mins time-step.

The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie, Grant Agreement n. 101033236.