Soil Erosion and Global Change: COST Action 623. Report on WG1 meeting, Leuven 15 April 00

COST 623, Working group 1 (Scale Issues)

Report of Meeting, Leuven 15 April 2000

A meeting was held in association with the Inrernational Franqui Chair Workshop, which was organised in The Catholic University (KU) of Leuven, Belgium for 12-15 April 2000, organised by Professor Keith Beven, the holder of the visiting Chair. The following is a summary of the themes of this meeting, and full details of the final day which formed the scientific content of the WG1 meeting, on Distributed modelling in Soil Erosion.

The Future Of Distributed Hydrological Modelling

Wed 12^th Session 1: Scale and Parameter Estimation Issues in Distributed Modelling

Thu 13^th Session 2: Remote Sensing and GIS and distributed modelling

Fri 14^th Session 3: Modelling the Hydrological Impacts of Land Use and Climate Change.

Sat 15^th Session 4: Distributed modelling in Soil Erosion.

0900-0940: Victor Jetten (Keynote):Distributed Soil erosion models: prospects for the future

0940-1000: Michael Bruen & Antti Taskinen: Distributed modelling of runoff and sediment in very small agricultural catchments with cohesive soils: an incremental investigation (Finland)

1000-1020: Olivier Cerdan et al: Modelling soil erosion in cultivated catchments incorporating multi-scale field and laboratory experiments (France)

1100-1140: V�ronique Auzet & Bruno Ambroise (Keynote): Typologies of soil surface conditions: interest for soil erosion modelling.

1140-1200: Richard Brazier & Keith Beven: Learning from the GLUE methodology: implications of equifinality and uncertainty from complex, physically based soil erosion models (WEPP)

1200-1220: Ilona Barlund et al: Application of USLE / ICECREAM under northern European conditions (Finland).

1220-1240: Juergen Schmidt & M. von Werner: Modelling soil erosion and sediment yields of reservoir catchments in the Osterzgebirge region of Saxony (Germany).

1240-1300: Ionel Zlate: Physically based and distributed modelling of the rainfall-runoff and coupled erosion processes in experimental basins in Romania

This was followed by a business meeting, with the following significant outcomes:

Reports of the Leicester and Reading WG1 meetings were accepted. 5 papers on Rainfall simulation are to be published as a themed section in Earth Surface Processes and Landforms in late 2000, edited by Tony Parsons and Bruce Lascelles. A special Issue in Agriculture, Ecology and Environment will be devoted to papers presented in Reading, jointly with the GCTE Networks on Soil Erosion, Soil Organic Matter and Soil Biology. 12 papers were submitted for 31 Mar '00 and are currently under review, together with an editorial synthesis for Mike Kirkby and David Powlson. Papers from the the Franqui Chair workshop will be submitted as a special issue of Hydrological Processes, edited by Keith Beven and Jan Feyen.

Future meetings planned:

Almeria 8-10 Sep '00: Details of the proposed meeting have been distributed separately. The organisers are

Programme: John Wainwright, KCL, London
Local: Juan Puigdefabregas, EEZA, CSIC, Almeria
COST: V�ronique Auzet, CEREG-ULP-ENGEES, CNRS, Strasbourg

It is proposed to combine this meeting with a WG3 meeting, held on 7^th Sep, and with the same local organiser. (COST organiser = Seppo Rekolainen)

Strasbourg Sep '01:

The significance of Surface Characteristics (SC) in soil erosion

Themes: Influences of SC on soil erosion: relevance of SC for modelling and land management
Key words: Infiltration, Runoff, Hydraulics, Erosion patterns, Spatial organisation, landscape structures, surface characteristics and patterns
Duration: 3 days conference; 2 days papers & 1 day excursion
Possible optional 3-day excursion (Paris-Orleans-Normandy)
Location: CEREG (Universit� Louis Pasteur, CNRS ENGEES)
Sponsor: RIDES group ( National programme for Hydrology-PNRH/ and for Soil Erosion -PNSE project & network)
Preparatory small group meeting: Strasbourg Jan/Feb '01)

Israel '01: Plans have not progresses on this meeting. There are administrative difficulties with Israel membership of COST, and this meeting is unlikely to take place before '02. There is therefore the possibility of an alternative WG1 meeting in the first half of '01.

Promotion of Research on Scale Issues through WG1.

There was a fruitful discussion on future research priorities. Although it was recognised that there was a lack of knowledge of many detailed processes, the priority for the working group lies in scaling up, incorporating the current state of the art on detailed mechanisms as fully as possible. A summary list was made of proposed topics for future work

Applications of land-use scenarios and climate, at regional to supra-national scales, to estimate delivery of sediment to river courses and local off-site effects.

Through generalising from representative areas / landscapes
Through coarse scale modelling

Interpreting a wider range of processes to provide major missing components in coarse scale understanding, e.g.

Runoff from seasonally and permanently Frozen soils
Snow cover and snow-melt erosion
Runoff generation in semi-arid areas

Linkage to the growing importance of sediment-borne pollutants, eg phosphorus
Impact of changing grid resolution on model forecasts.

These themes can be most effectively addressed in different ways. Theme A was seen as a suitable topic for an additional meeting, and a tentative proposal was made for a meeting on this theme in NL, organised by Victor Jetten for '01. Theme B will be partially addressed through the Almeria (WG1) and Oslo (WG2) meetings, and we should be aware of the need to develop this theme through those meetings. Theme C was proposed for exploration through a joint meeting with the appropriate cognate COST action. Theme D was seen as an important technical issue, but one which was less suitable as a separate meeting theme, but could be included as a session within A.

The paper meeting was attended by c.40 people, and the business meeting by 17 people, 10 of them supported by COST WG1 and four as members of the Managing Committee.

Last updated 25/05/2000 00:09:14