In-between forest expansion and cropland decline: A revised USLE model for soil erosion risk under land-use change in a Mediterranean region

The present study illustrates an original approach for the long-term assessment of soil erosion risk under land-use changes in a Mediterranean region (Matera, southern Italy). The study has been focused on the implementation of a modified Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) model at three time points (1960,1990, 2010) with the objective to evaluate the contribution of each component to model's performance and model outcomes' reliability. A modified USLE model was proposed for the assessment of soil erosion risk, based on the simplification of model's parameters and the use of high spatial resolution datasets. Spatio-temporal variability in the model's outcomes was analyzed for basic land-use classes. Our approach has improved model's flexibility with the use of high spatial resolution layers, producing reliable long-term estimates of soil loss for the study area. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.