SUBSURFACE EROSION BY SOIL PIPING

Soil erosion has been identified as the gravest threat among all soil degradation processes (Montanarella et al., 2016). It may cause direct and indirect environmental damage affecting land, freshwater, oceans, and thus people’s life. Soil erosion impacts on nutrient and carbon cycle, leads to the property damage, loss of livelihoods and services as well as social and economic disruption (Borrelli et al., 2020; Poesen, 2018). It not only lowers soil quality on-site, but causes also significant sediment-related problems off-site, such as surface water pollution, muddy floods, reservoir siltation, changes in river morphology, coastal development and ecology (Poesen, 2018). The RT work focuses on water erosion as water is one of the major drivers (besides wind) of soil erosion (Borrelli et al., 2020). Up to now most research on water soil erosion have focused on sheet and rill erosion, whereas gully erosion received less attention (Poesen et al., 2003), and soil piping is even often omitted in soil studies (Bernatek-Jakiel and Poesen, 2018). Soil piping is a subsurface erosion that leads to the formation of pipes (underground channels), which are only visible at the surface when a pipe roof collapses. This project aims to study soil piping as one of the most underestimated soil erosion process. The main concern is put on the recognition of factors controlling these processes in regional scale in order to present the susceptibility to soil piping at European scale.

Team leader: Anita Bernatek-Jakiel (JU)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research team members: Anna Biernacka (JU), Anastasiia Derii (JU), Joanna Hałys (JU), Dawid Piątek (JU), Mateusz Stolarczyk (JU), Patryk Wacławczyk (JU)

Supervisors: Matthias Vanmaercke (KU Leuven), Jean Poesen (KU Leuven, UMCS Lublin, Poland)

Collaborators: Estela Nadal-Romero (IPE-CSIC, Zaragoza, Spain), Panos Panagos (JRC Ispra, Italy), Taco H. Regensburg (UK Leeds, UK), Jan Rodzik (UMCS Lublin, Poland), Els Verachtert (VITO, Belgium), Wojciech Zgłobicki (UMCS, Poland), Pasqualle Borrelli (Università Degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy), Gergely Jakab (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary)