Assessing Vulnerability of Lake Erie Landscapes to Soil Erosion: Modelled and Measured Approaches.

Loss of soil from agricultural landscapes to Lake Erie via water erosion is a key transport mechanism for phosphorus bound to soil particles. The variable geography and diversity of agricultural production systems and management practices makes estimating risk of soil erosion challenging. Risk of soil erosion depends on a combination of factors including the extent to which soil remains covered, which differs with crop type and management.
Two different approaches of estimating the vulnerability of landscapes to soil erosion are compared among Soil Landscapes of Canada (SLC) in the Lake Erie basin: a modelling approach incorporating farm census and soil survey data; and, a measured approach using remotely sensed data to quantify the magnitude of soil cover by residue across the basin. This is similar to the Conservation Effects Assessment Project (NRCS, 2011) approach that compares inherent landscape vulnerability to current levels of conservation treatment, in this case soil cover.