Methodologies to assess human-induced land change processes relevant to land degradation under different scenarios of climate change and socio-economic conditions

Land degradation is a complex concept encompassing a variety of processes, natural or human induced, that affect the functioning of the land and the providing of ecosystem services. We propose a methodology to evaluate the impacts of future scenarios of socio-economic pathways and representative forcing pathways on land degradation. We selected a limited set of human induced land change processes that could potentially lead to land degradation and combined them spatially for each scenario. We compared the concurring variables between scenarios and over time to assess the sensitivity of the scenarios to the land change processes relevant for land degradation. With the processes or potential issues and the scenarios used in this study on Latin America end the Caribbean, we found (1) that the differences over time were much larger than those between scenarios and (2) that the effect of climate change was negligible compared to the socio-economic effect. Further investigation with more variables dependent on the climate scenarios is needed to confirm the results.JRC.D.6-Knowledge for Sustainable Development and Food Securit

Forecasting localized weather impacts on vegetation as seen from space with meteo-guided video prediction

We present a novel approach for modeling vegetation response to weather in Europe as measured by the Sentinel 2 satellite. Existing satellite imagery forecasting approaches focus on photorealistic quality of the multispectral images, while derived vegetation dynamics have not yet received as much attention. We leverage both spatial and temporal context by extending state-of-the-art video prediction methods with weather guidance. We extend the EarthNet2021 dataset to be suitable for vegetation modeling by introducing a learned cloud mask and an appropriate evaluation scheme. Qualitative and quantitative experiments demonstrate superior performance of our approach over a wide variety of baseline methods, including leading approaches to satellite imagery forecasting. Additionally, we show how our modeled vegetation dynamics can be leveraged in a downstream task: inferring gross primary productivity for carbon monitoring. To the best of our knowledge, this work presents the first models for continental-scale vegetation modeling at fine resolution able to capture anomalies beyond the seasonal cycle, thereby paving the way for predictive assessments of vegetation status.Comment: Source code available at https://github.com/earthnet2021/earthnet-models-pytorc

World Atlas of Desertification - Introductory Brochure

The brochure introduces the concept of the World Atlas of Desertification which relies on converging evidence of combined human-environment processes pointing out that land degradation cannot be modeled satisfactorily at global scales.The introductory brochure provides a short overview of the main land degradation issues, through illustration of a number key global datasets and some case study examples that reflect the global patterns and pathways to solutions. The brochure start with highlighting the human dominance that drives global environmental changes. The consequences of feeding a growing population include agriculture expansion and intensification, illustrated by maps and data on irrigation and nutrient use. Aridity and drought are important phenomena aggravating the already present human pressures on the environment. Other pressure patterns playing at global scale are illustrated with examples from China, India, S. America and the Sahel, along with a forward view on solutions.JRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen

European HYdropedological Data Inventory (EU-HYDI)

There is a common need for reliable hydropedological information in Europe. In the last decades research institutes, universities and government agencies have developed local, regional and national datasets containing soil physical, chemical, hydrological and taxonomic information often combined with land use and landform data. A hydrological database for western European soils was also created in the mid-1990s. However, a comprehensive European hydropedological database, with possible additional information on chemical parameters and land use is still missing. A comprehensive joint European hydropedological inventory can serve multiple purposes, including scientific research, modelling and application of models on different geographical scales. The objective of the joint effort of the participants is to establish the European Hydropedological Data Inventory (EU-HYDI). This database holds data from European soils focusing on soil physical, chemical and hydrological properties. It also contains information on geographical location, soil classification and land use/cover at the time of sampling. It was assembled with the aim of encompassing the soil variability in Europe. It contains data from 18 countries with contributions from 29 institutions. This report presents an overview of the database, details the individual contributed datasets and explains the quality assurance and harmonization process that lead to the final database

Linking soil hydraulic properties to structure indicators : experiments and modelling

Soil hydraulic properties are needed for modelling below-ground water flow and solute movements. They are very variable in space and time and across scales and their characterisation is tedious. Pedotransfer functions (PTF) are tools developed to predict hydraulic properties from more readily available information. This thesis provides PTF predicting the parameters of a closed-form model of the soil hydraulic conductivity and moisture retention curves based on the soil texture, bulk density and organic carbon content. These PTF show their limits very close to saturation because the soil structure is not well apprehended by these indicators. With the aim of developing PTF considering the soil macroporosity, soils of homogeneous texture but contrasted structure (silt loam) are studied with a multistep outflow system and with fine resolution moisture retention measurements. It is first shown that the choice of the model has more impact than the spatial variability on extrapolation results and that, even with very good fitting performances, the prediction uncertainty can be very large. Assuming that land cover and horizon depth control the root architecture, the soil biological activity and land management practices, their impact on close to saturation hydraulic properties of silt loam soils is investigated. Results suggest that land cover should be included into the next generation of PTF. It is also shown that the presence of macropore is generalised in these soils. Finally, hydraulic properties of tropical soils derived from volcanic ashes are successfully linked with pedo-chemical and morphological indicators determined on exactly the same sample as the hydraulic measurements. Future use of this combination of information for developing PTF for tropical soils is therefore advised.(AGRO 3) -- UCL, 201

Soil retention and conductivity curve data base sDB, link to MATLAB files

Supplement to: Weynants, Melanie; Vereecken, Harry; Javaux, Mathieu (2009): Revisiting Vereecken Pedotransfer Functions: Introducing a Closed-Form Hydraulic Model. Vadose Zone Journal, 8(1), 86-95, https://doi.org/10.2136/vzj2008.0062 We revisited the Vereecken database, which has been used to derive pedotransfer functions (PTFs) to estimate the soil hydraulic parameters of Belgian soils. We developed new PTFs based on the Mualem-van Genuchten model, constraining m = 1 - 1/n and using fewer parameters. The goodness-of-fit was similar to the one originally obtained by Vereecken. We used a one-step procedure that allows direct quantification of the correlation matrix and the uncertainties of the estimated parameter values. The coefficients of the new PTFs were estimated using a global search algorithm and they were validated against independent data. The PTFs have a wider range of applicability since: (i) they allow the use of the closed-form solution of the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity in the Mualem-van Genuchten model; and (ii) they consider the effect of macroporosity. We determined that the hydraulic conductivity measured close to saturation could not be estimated based on the available estimators; however, the hydraulic conductivity in the matrix domain was predicted with high accuracy