4.3 Soil erosion susceptibility management
The average SE rate calculated for the whole basin can be considered a
relevant reference value for the planning of future management
strategies for soil and water conservation (Yassoglou and Kosmas, 2000).
For instance, Leptosols are well represented across Mediterranean
coastal areas and considering that they are often intensively farmed,
the results of this study can be easily transposed to these areas. The
SE susceptibility maps can provide a significant and detailed indication
for SE risk mitigation related to land use management. Such products can
help in identifying those areas which would surely need the
implementation of anti-erosion actions. Therefore, SE susceptibility
maps can be an important tool for policy makers and farmers for
watershed management. This assumption has been proved in several studies
across India (Bhattacharya et al., 2020), Italy (Maruffi et al., 2022),
Morocco (Markhi et al., 2018), and Ethiopia (Aga et al., 2018).
According to the obtained results, several anti-erosion actions could be
employed to overcome the increasing SE. Naturalization should be
preferred to agricultural management and deforestation, especially on
Leptosols, and this would be relevant even at relatively low slope
(Englund et al., 2020). Permanent crops with greening management should
be preferred to seasonal crops in areas under predominant agricultural
management. With special reference to olive farming in Mediterranean
regions, SE represents the principal environmental problem (Vanwalleghem
et al., 2011), and both no-tillage soil management and cover crop
development are proposed as adaptation strategies to CC impacts (Fraga
et al., 2021). Overgrazing should be carefully avoided (Palm et al.,
2014) introducing a holistic planned grazing (Savory and Butterfield,
1999) to promote grassland self-regeneration. To make such an assessment
effective on the long term, a projection of future SE risk is extremely
useful for the protection and management of watersheds. The present
study found that, despite both future scenarios will experience an
impact in terms of increased average temperatures and a decline in
precipitation respect to the historical scenario, the predicted increase
of extreme events will lead to considerably higher SE maximum values for
the RCP 8.5 scenario. Although this is a less probable scenario in view
of the new EU policies to support climate actions and sustainable
development, like the Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy, which
complement the already existing PAC measures to support the agricultural
sector, it interestingly shows the effect of intensification of extreme
events on other ecosystem processes like SE, relevant for ecosystem
sustainability, which requires a sensibilization action of land managers
and landowners on this issues for a substantial reduction of soil loss
from the most fragile areas of their land. Another relevant issue to
consider is the significance of the estimated SE rates in terms of
desertification and soil degradation risk, comparing the magnitude of SE
rates with soil formation rates. Considering that the average 20 years
values obtained from this study in all the time periods are higher
than the desirable range of SE, comparable with the rate of soil
formation (Verheijen et al., 2009), the implementation of management
plans aimed at improving land use and promoting countermeasures to
reduce SE become mandatory and urgent.