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Abstract

Phosphorus losses from arable land need to be reduced to prevent eutrophication of surrounding waters. Owing to the high spatial variability of P losses, cost-effective countermeasures need to target parts of the catchment that are most susceptible to P losses. Field surveys identified critical source areas for overland flow and erosion amounting to only 0.4-2.6 % of total arable land in four different catchments in southern Sweden. Distributed modelling using high-resolution digital elevation data identified 72-96 % of these observed erosion and overland flow features. The modelling results were also successfully used to predict occurrence of overland flow and rill and gully erosion in a catchment in central Sweden. Such exact high-resolution modelling allows for accurate placement of planned countermeasures. However, current legislative and environmental subsidy programmes need to change their approach from income-loss compensation to rewarding high cost effectiveness of implemented countermeasures.

Keywords

Erosion; Modelling; Phosphorus; Eutrophication

Published in

AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment
2015, volume: 44, number: 2, pages: S241-S251
Publisher: SPRINGER

SLU Authors

Global goals (SDG)

SDG6 Clean water and sanitation

UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Sciences

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0618-4

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/68128