Catena 97 (2012) 8594

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A robust algorithm for estimating soil erodibility in different climates

L. Borselli a,, D. Torri b, J. Poesen c, P. Iaquinta d
a
Instituto de Geologia/Fac. De Ingenera, Universitad Autonoma de San Luis Potos (UASLP), Av. Dr. Manuel Nava 5, C.P. 78240, San Luis Potos, SLP, Mexico
b
CNR-IRPI, Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection, Via Madonna Alta 126, 06128 Perugia, Italy
c
Division of Geography, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200E, B-3001 Heverlee, Belgium
d
CNR-IRPI, Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection, Via Cavour 46, 87030 Rende di Cosenza, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The analysis of global soil erodibility data by Salvador Sanchis et al. (2008) showed that there is a signicant
Received 3 November 2011 climate effect on soil erodibility which allows for a split of the data into two subsets, one for prevailing cool
Received in revised form 20 May 2012 conditions and another for prevailing warm conditions (dened using the Kppen climate classication). De-
Accepted 30 May 2012
spite the recognition of this new dichotomous variable, prediction of soil erodibility values remained very
Available online xxxx
poor. This paper presents a new technique for dealing with such a variability by calculating probability den-
Keywords:
sity functions of soil erodibility K values when the user knows a set of textural parameters and the climatic
Soil erosion classication of the site. Finally the user has the possibility to decide, on the basis of local knowledge,
Soil erodibility which K value to use. The procedure has been implemented in a freeware software named KUERY available
Quantile regression for the scientic community. Finally, as an illustration, the methodology is applied to a catchment in south
Probability density function Italy.
KUERY software Crown Copyright 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction up-down direction, hence bare with no cumulative erosion forms

Soil erodibility conceptually represents the way in which soil re-
acts to erosional agents, hence it is limited to a series of processes
(e.g. detachment and transport of soil particles, rain inltration,
breakdown of soil aggregates, etc.) that occur while soil erosion
takes place and the complex interaction between the erosive agent
and soil determines how much and how soil is eroded. Hence soil
erodibility depends on the processes that cause erosion. From a prac-
tical point of view, erodibility depends on the way in which we select
the processes to include in our description (i.e. model), how we de-
ne the mathematics of the chosen processes, how rough is our
parameterisation and how difcult it is to measure all the relevant
properties of the soil and of the erosive agents. When we restrict our-
selves to the Universal Soil Loss Equation (Wischmeier and Smith,
1978), and its subsequent modications (Foster et al., 2001; Renard
et al., 1997), soil erodibility gets a particular meaning. It represents
the integrated long-term average soil response to rainstorms. Soil
erodibility represents in a lumped manner the global response of a
soil to a large number of hydrological and erosion processes of
which runoff generation, sheet and rill erosion are the most impor-
tant. The soil prole in its entirety determines the soil response to
rain erosive power. All this is represented through one single number
(i.e. K, the soil erodibility factor ) that is calculated from soil loss mea-
surement in the eld over a standard plot, kept freshly disked in an
Corresponding author. Tel.: + 524448171039.
E-mail address: lborselli@gmail.com (L. Borselli).
(Wischmeier and Smith, 1978). Data are suggested to be collected
over a 20year period. Obviously, rill erosion, which usually causes in-
tense soil losses, cannot be overwhelmingly important, otherwise soil
characteristics, such as texture or other basic characteristics of the
surface soil horizon, will not be invariant during the observation peri-
od (as top soil characteristics may change after intense or prolonged
soil loss).
Operatively, the USLE denes soil erodibility (K) as the ratio be-
tween soil loss and the causative rain erosivity (R), when the other
erosion factors (L: slope length; S: slope gradient; C: crop and man-
agement; P: erosion control practice) are unitary or, more generally,
as the following ratio:
A
K 1
RLS
This denition implies that all the errors on measurements and all
the inaccuracy in mathematical representations of the factors at the
denominator are errors on K, which acts as a black-box coefcient.
When the K-data are interpolated in order to generate an alterna-
tive to the costly and time-consuming way of measuring K in the eld,
data are scattered and many aspects remain unanswered. One of the
best estimates of the soil erodibility factor still remains the
Wischmeier et al. (1971) formula (or nomograph) which is largely
based on eld-data for medium-textured soils in the USA.
Many additional data that allow an estimation of soil erodibility do
exist in the literature (e.g. Poesen, 1993; Poesen et al., 1994; Torri et
al., 1997). As data have been measured in conditions often far from

0341-8162/$ see front matter. Crown Copyright 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.catena.2012.05.012
86
the standard conditions, Torri et al. (1997) and Salvador Sanchis et al.
(2008) have used only part of the data, i.e. those collected in condi-
tions relatively close to the standard procedure (Torri et al., 1997).
Despite the reduction, they come from various places in the world
and represent soil response under widely different climatic condi-
tions (Salvador Sanchis et al., 2008).
The recent re-elaboration of part of the Torri et al. (1997) soil
erodibility global dataset (EGD) by Salvador Sanchis et al. (2008)
showed that there is a signicant climate effect on soil erodibility
which allows for a split of the data into two subsets, one with domi-
nant cool conditions and another with dominant warm conditions
(dened on the basis of Kppen climate classication). Despite the
recognition of this new dichotomous variable, prediction of soil erod-
ibility values remains extremely poor. This study aims at developing a
technique for dealing with such a variability, calculating it through
the frequency distributions of the soil erodibility values observed
for given textural, organic matter and climate data. The user of the al-
gorithm will nally have the possibility to decide, on the basis of local
knowledge, which values to use. Finally application of the methodol-
ogy is illustrated using data from the Esaro catchment (Calabria,
Italy). A full freeware software, implementing the proposed algo-
rithms and methodology, is available for users and the scientic
community.
2. Algorithm denition
The poor performance of classical statistical techniques, which
have been applied in previous studies (e.g. Rmkens et al., 1997;
Salvador Sanchis et al., 2008; Torri et al., 1997, 2002) for analysing
the global soil erodibility dataset (EGD: Poesen et al., 1994; Torri
et al., 1997, 2002) lead to explore alternative ways in order to infer
the range of uncertainty of K-values associated to every combination
of climate and of input soil parameters.
In our Algorithm the soil parameters considered are the following.
a) the logarithm of the geometric mean of the particle-size distribu-
tion (Dg), used also by Torri et al. (1997, 2002), which can be
directly calculated according to Shirazi et al. (1988):
q
Dg f i log10 di di:1
i
where fi is the mass fraction of particles in the class with range of
diameters di and di-1 (in mm). If only three main textural compo-
nents of the studied soil, i.e. sand (S), loam (L) and clay (C), are
available, the argument of square root in Eq. (2) can be calculated
as shown in Table 1 or using the simplied formula (Borselli et al.,
2009), if only three main textural components of soil: sand (S),
loam (L) and clay (C) are available. Dg can also be calculated by
a simplied formula (Borselli et al., 2009):
3:5C2:0L0:5S
Dg
100
where C, L and S are respectively the percentage of three main tex-
tural classes Clay, Loam and Sand;
Table 1
Constants used for the calculation of parameter Dg, in the case of three basic textural
components.
Textural component di (mm) di 1 (mm) didi 1 (mm2) log10
CLAY 0.002 0.00005a 0.0000001
LOAM 0.05 0.002 0.0001
SAND 2 0.053 0.1
a
Conventionally, the lower limit of clay particles is set equal to 0.00005 (mm)
(Shirazi et al., 1988).
L. Borselli et al. / Catena 97 (2012) 8594
b) the second textural parameter (Sg) is the logarithm of geometric stan-
dard deviation of Dg, already dened by Shirazi and Boersma (1984)
and Shirazi et al. (1988); Sg is calculated with the following equation
s
 q 2
Sg f i log10 di di1 Dg 4
i
Borselli et al. (2009) also proposed a simplied equation for Sg if for a
given soil only the three main textural components C, L and S are
known:
s
C 3:5Dg2 L2:0Dg2 S0:5Dg2
Sg 5
100
Obviously the simplied Eqs. (3) and (5) make calculations easier but
are rougher approximations than Eqs. (2) and (4) which were used
for developing the algorithm;
c) the percentage of soil organic matter (SOM);
d) the percentage of rock fragment content (Rk).
Torri et al. (1997) proposed a technique based on fuzzy sets and
numbers, which was implemented into software, to derive the distri-
bution of observed K-values. The software operates on a subset of the
whole EGD as stony soils were not included (i.e. soil with rock frag-
ment content Rk >10%). The fuzzy technique used at that time cannot
be considered sufciently general because it was based on a prelimi-
nary and subjective subdivision of the K-dataset in groups associated
to xed ranges of the various input parameters. This limitation can be
overcome using a continuous interpolation of given quantiles on the
basis of a series of soil parameters.
As a preliminary step, the quantile regression techniques (Buchinsky,
1998; Koenker and Basset, 1978; Lee and Tanaka, 1999; Yu, et al., 2003)
were coded into a specic Object PASCAL language program to obtain
quantile interpolating algorithms of soil erodibility as a function of vari-
ous parameters (e.g. K vs. Dg; K vs. Sg, K vs. SOM, K vs. Rk).
The procedure for quantile regression can be dened more rigorously
as follows. Given a pair of random variables (X,Y), the quantile regression
of Y on X can be dened in terms of conditional distribution F(Y | x) of Y
for any given X=x, for any probability value p[0, 1]. The quantile
2 regression qp(x) becomes the solution of the conditional distribution
equation (Yu, 2002):
 
F qp xjx p 6
In other terms, for any given X-value, it is possible to associate a
quantile in the range 0 b p b 1.0 to every Y-value. This denition has
been successfully applied in many elds for the last 25 years (Yu et
al., 2003). In our study the two climatic groups of K correspond to
the two different Y-sets while the X set will represent any of the var-
ious soil parameters, e.g. (K|Dg). This allows to dene a Cumulative
3 Distribution Function (CDF) of soil erodibility for every value of
each soil parameter (e.g. the observed erodibility CDF at Dg = 2.5).
2.1. Algorithm description and implementation
According to Koenker and Basset (1978) the optimal quantile re-
gression function qp (x) may be obtained by minimizing the following
generalised objective function f(obj):
2 3

p
f obj min 4
t
pyi f i ; xi  1pyi f i ; xi 5
t
7
ifi:yi f i t ;xi g ifi:yi bf i t ;xi g
di di1
3.5 where:
2
0.5 i is the index that identies each element of the data set;
xi,yi are the coordinates in X and Y of the ith element of the
data set
 L. Borselli et al. / Catena 97 (2012) 8594
p is the chosen regression quantile (e.g.: 0.1, 0.5, 0.75);
t is a vector that contains the values of the coefcients den-
ing the quantile function to be optimized (i.e. coefcients to
be found during the optimization process);
fi( t, xi) the regression quantile function as dened by t and xi
position.
In the case of the EGD, the variance and distribution of observed K-
values varies irregularly and independently from the soil parameter
for which the K-behaviour is examined (see Fig. 1a, b, c, d). Hence lin-
ear or monotonic quantile functions (Koenker and Basset, 1978) can-
not be used because they are not general enough. Instead a non-linear
and non-monotonic function is needed for the quantile regression
(e.g. kernel function, polynomial or spline; Yu et al., 2003).
In our case we adopted the four-point sliding polynomial tech-
nique (Snyder et al., 1991) to build up a non-linear function with
the required properties. The sliding polynomials are specic type of
spline functions that preserve the properties of continuity and non-
monotonicity in the explored range of the dataset.
This technique requires the subdivision of the data range of the in-
dependent variable X in n intervals (spans) of equal length (n = 7 in
our case). The positioning of the spline's knots is given from a set of
(xj, yj) coordinates, where j = 1, , n.
Using sliding polynomial splines the xj coordinate of the spans are
constant values, but the yj values must be obtained by an optimisation
algorithm. In this case the yj coincide with the t shown in Eq. (7).
The non-linear optimisation process follows two steps:
Step 1. Quantile functions are optimised and calculated for the 0.25
and 0.75 quantiles. A ltering criterion is then established in
Fig. 1. Examples of quantile interpolating functions. a, b) Soil erodibility (K) versus the logarithm of the geometric mean particle size (Dg) for cool and warm climates and rock content
b 10%, c, d) Soil erodibility (K) versus the standard deviation of the logarithmic transformation of particle-size distribution (Sg) for cool and warm climates and rock content b10%.
87
order to remove possible outliers: all the data-points, plotting
outside the two quartiles and whose distance from the closer
quartile exceeds twice the local interquartile range, are classi-
ed as outliers and removed.
Step 2. The quantile regression, after outlier's removal, is performed
for the following quantiles: 0.01, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.25, 0.3, 0.4,
0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.75, 0.8, 0.9, 0.95, 0.99 (note that quantiles
0.25 and 0.75 are calculated anew).
The non-linear optimisation process for each single quantile is
obtained using a differential genetic evolution algorithm (Storn and
Price, 1997) and adopting all the additional set-up strategies to en-
sure a global optimisation result (Price, 1999; Storn and Price, 1997).
2.2. Soil erodibility subsets and results
The global K-data base (EGD) was subdivided in four subsets,
according to climate (two groups) and to rock fragment content
(Rk: two groups: less than and more than 10% rock fragment content
by mass). The optimisation algorithm was launched for all soil param-
eters. Some of these parameters did not produce any acceptable or
useful result and were consequently removed. The nal explanatory
variables were slightly different in each group as described below, in
agreement with Salvador Sanchis et al.'s (2008) ndings:
Group 1) cool climatene soil: Dg, Sg, SOM;
Group 2) cool climatestony soil: Dg, Rk > 10%;
Group 3) warm climatene soil: Dg, Sg, SOM;
Group 4) warm climatestony soil: Dg, Rk > 10%.
88
In the case of groups 2 and 4 (stony soils), the behaviour is strong-
ly dominated by rock fragment content while the effects of SOM and
Sg are not detectable and in these case only Dg and Rk are used.
Two examples of the nal results of the optimisation algorithm,
i.e. the quantile functions, are shown in Fig. 2(a, b) the inferred cumu-
lative distribution function (CDF) for two Dg-values (2.4 and 0.7)
and two Sg -values (0.8 and 1.2) (both for cool climate).
When the quantile functions are available, the conditional proba-
bility F(K|x) (e.g.: x = Dg or x = Sg) can be obtained for each indepen-
dent variable in the dataset and for each climate group.
All the quantile functions derived for the optimisation process on
the EGD are stored in a special format using the positions of
optimised knots that dene univocally the sliding polynomial
functions.
To facilitate the query process and inference from the global
dataset for an end user, a special software (KUERY: from query
and K) has been developed. This software allows the end user to cal-
culate the most probable soil erodibility CDF for the given climate
group and the given soil type (dened in terms of Dg, Sg, SOM and Rk).
The data processing ow of KUERY follows these steps:
1) For a given combination of climate group and Dg, Sgand SOM input
values (if soil rock fragment content is Rk b 10%) or of Dg and rock
fragment content (if rock fragment content is Rk > 10%), KUERY
interrogates the stored quantile functions for each parameter
and produces an erodibility CDF for each input parameter as illus-
trated in Fig. 2(a, b);
2) The end user selects one of the two available Merging Operator
Types (MOT) for producing one single nal CDF : a) intersection
(the logical operator AND) b) union (the logical operator OR).
Fig. 2. Cumulative distribution function (CDF) of soil erodibility-values (K) corresponding
to a) two different Dg values and b) two different Sg values (cool climate case).
L. Borselli et al. / Catena 97 (2012) 8594
As an example for the Group 1 and 3, the nal CDF distribution
F(K)i for MOT intersection operator that is the normalised product
of independent F(K)I for each soil parameter considered (e.g. F(K|
Dg)i):
h
F K i F K jDg i F K jSg F K jSOMi F K i min
i
8
F K i max F K i min
where:
h
F K i max max F K jDg i ; F K jSg ; F K jSOMi  9
i
h
F K i min min F K jDg i ; F K jSg ; F K jSOMi  10
i
and the nal CDF distribution for MOT union operator is given by
normalising the summation of independent F(K)i for each soil param-
eter considered:
h
F K i F K jDg i F K jSg F K jSOMi 
i
11
3
The resulting CDF represents the most probable values for the soil
erodibility factor corresponding to the given values of soil properties.
In the case of intersection, the CDF represents the irreducible disper-
sion of observed data, given the values of the input soil parameters. If,
instead, union is chosen then the user obtains the total dispersion of
observed data. In principle, intersection should give the correct
Fig. 3. Probability Density Functions (PDF) produced by KUERY for: a) cool and b) warm
climate groups, and rock content b 10%. Input data are identical for both cases. Note the
differences in interpolated frequency distributions, despite the fact that input values are
the same.
 L. Borselli et al. / Catena 97 (2012) 8594 89

Fig. 4. Location of the Esaro catchment (115 km) in south Italy with soil map, D g, Sg, SOM. The codes (4.2; 4.4; 4.5; 4.7; 6.3) of the pedological units identify different soil
associations: 4.2 includes Chromic and Vertic Haploxererts; 4.4 is dominated by Entisols; 4.5 includes Typic Haploxerepts and Vertic Haploxerolls; 4.7 includes Typic
Haploxeralfs and Typic Fragixeralfs; 6.3 includes Typic Endoaquents, Vertic Haploxerepts and Vertic Calcixerepts (ARSSA-CAL, 2003).

guess but in case of non-existing intersection a warning is given and
the use of union operator instead is suggested.
KUERY allows for extracting quantiles and relevant statistics as
mean and variance from the nal CDF. The nal probability density
function (PDF) is also calculated by KUERY using a numerical differ-
entiation of the nal CDF.
Examples of the nal output produced by KUERY are given in
Fig. 3a, b.
Knowledge of the distribution of the interpolated K-values at any
given set of proper soil parameters represents an important help for
assessing soil erodibility. Actually, information on the distribution of
soil erodibility, coupled with eld observations or laboratory tests
(such as soil aggregate stability assessed using the drop method),
can help in selecting a soil erodibility value from the distribution
obtained using KUERY. For example, high aggregate stability or high
inltration rate suggest the selection of a low quantile K-value. Addi-
tional dispersive behaviour of the soil (ESP > 5% ) may suggest a selec-
tion of K value corresponding to higher quantile (e.g. 0.9, Borselli et
al., 2009).
2.3. Application at watershed level: the Esaro catchment (Calabria, Italy)
The Esaro catchment, located in the Calabria region (south Italy),
lies between latitudes 385844 and 390526 and between longi-
tudes 165752 and 170838. This catchment is approximately
115 km 2 in size with an average elevation of about 105 m a.s.l. and
a maximum elevation of 238 m a.s.l.; the average gradient of the
slopes is 1.74%.
The average annual air temperature is about 18 C, the warmest
month reaches an average temperature of ca. 26.5 C in August and,
90 L. Borselli et al. / Catena 97 (2012) 8594

nally, the coldest month is January with an average temperature of
about 9.7 C.
The total annual rainfall is about 650 mm, concentrated over 90%
in the wet season between October and March.
The rounded shape of the catchmentthe Gravelius factor is equal
to 1.65and the radial pattern of drainage network promote the con-
centration of surface runoff. In fact, although the average runoff dis-
charge is approximately only 0.6 m 3 s 1, frequently occurring
historical ooding events with peak discharges larger than 100 m3/s,
culminated in the tragic oods of October 14, 1996 (estimated peak
discharge of about 775 m3 s 1). On this last occasion large volumes of
sediment from the slopes were deposited in the town of Crotone.
Marly clay and silty clay Pliocenic marine sediments are the dom-
inant lithologies in this catchment (60% of the area). Land use is
mainly characterized by cropland (ca. 68%) and by arboreal coverage
(ca. 16%). Soil type distribution in the catchment is shown in Fig. 4.
Soil data come from the local soil service (ARSSA-CAL, 2003) and
numbers correspond to a code referring to the soil sub Regions (at
scale 1:1,000,000) 4.2 to 6.3 (cartographic units covering several
soil types). The soil units and dominant soil families represented in
Fig. 4 are described in Table 2.
According to the Kppen criteria, the local climate is classied as
Mediterranean climate with hot summers, or, in other words, Csa
warm group:
C temperate humid climates with mild winters and air tem-
peratures between 3 C and 18 C for the coldest month;
s with a dry summer, where the driest month of summer re-
ceives less than 40 mm, and the month with most rainfall in
winter has at least 3 times the rainfall of the driest summer
month;
a hot summer. The air temperature of the warmest month is
above 22 C, at least 4 months have an average above 10 C.
This climatic group corresponds to the warm group according to
Salvador Sanchis et al. (2008). Here we also present the elaboration
for the case cool climate in order to exemplify the differences be-
tween the two situations.
Applying KUERY gives rise to probability distributions of K-values,
shown in Fig. 5b and c where soil erodibility for the warm and cool
climate case is shown through its mean value. In both cases (warm
and cool climate) there are soils with and without rock fragments.
Hence the example covers the four basic subsets: 2 climate groups
and 2 subgroups each having a different rock fragment content (e.g.
the unit 4.5 in Fig. 4 is characterised by Rk > 10%). Fig. 5a presents
the K factor (Kw, in SI units) calculated using the nomograph pro-
posed by Wischmeier et al. (1971), but limiting ourselves to the use
of soil textural data and organic matter content only.
Fig. 6a, b shows the differences k (in %), between the soil erod-
ibility calculated using KUERY for both climatic groups (warm
(Fig. 6a) and cool (Fig. 6b)) and the soil erodibility computed by the
classical nomograph method Kw, (Wischmeier et al., 1971). k is cal-
culated using the equation:
KK w
k 100 12
Kw
3. Discussion
Despite the fact that K-data have been subdivided on the basis of
climate, advances in deterministic prediction of soil erodibility re-
mains limited. The attempts made by Salvador Sanchis et al. (2008)
were all negative and even the loose trends found by Torri et al.
(1997) where not conrmed. This paper tries to bridge this lack of
predictability by introducing the probability of nding a value of
soil erodibility which is in agreement with the measured K-data
from soils with similar characteristics. Hence an algorithm (KUERY)
has been developed which calculates probabilities under the form of
percentiles. KUERY works using as input data climate (dichotomous),
rock fragment content (continuous from 10% up), textural data (log-
arithms of ne soil geometric mean particle size and standard devia-
tion) and soil organic matter content.
With this input data a probability distribution of K-values is pro-
duced. The user is then invited to opt for some of the values on the
basis of available local knowledge or of other data which he/she can
access. Soil aggregate stability, exchangeable sodium content and
electrical conductivity (i.e. dispersivity of the soil) are certainly very
good indicators of soil erodibility. Inltration rate and depth of the
rst impervious horizon are other parameters that can help selecting
a realistic K value.
An application of KUERY to a real situation is illustrated for a small
catchment in South Italy.
The climate of this catchment belongs to the warm climate group.
Calculations have also been made for the cool climate group, to show
the signicant differences in K between the two groups. The differ-
ences between the two scenarios (Cool and Warm climate, Fig. 5) in-
dicate that care should be taken when dening the climate zone.
Obviously climatic zones, such as rock fragment above/below the
10% thresholds are all sharp discontinuities which add to the

Table 2
Soil cartographic units present in the Esaro catchment (Fig. 4) (from ARSSA-CAL, 2003).

Pedological Description
features
(Soil unit
code)

4.2 Includes at areas, sometimes reclaimed and locally terraced. The substrate are ne, calcareous sediments. Predominant land use: cropland, vineyard.
Dominant soil families: Chromic and Vertic Haploxererts
4.4 Mainly present in the valley bottoms in hilly countryside whose substrate are ne-grained colluvial and alluvial deposits Predominant land use: cropland.
Dominant soil families: Entisols
4.5 This unit includes three orders of Quaternary marine terraces:, located between 40 and 170 m asl The surfaces are terraced, at times, deeply incised by the
drainage network. Along the cuts and slopes of the terraces the transition between the calcarenitic thick crust and the Pliocene clays is visible. Land use:
cropland (including orchards).
Dominant soil families: Typic Haploxerepts and Vertic Haploxerolls
4.7 This unit is mainly distributed parallel to the coastline, usually below 100 m asl.,
along terraces with a pedogenetic substratum which consists of coarse sediment on silty clay Pliocene formation. Land use: cropland, olive grove, and vineyard.
Dominant soil families: Typic Haploxeralfs and Typic Fragixeralfs
6.3 This unit is located on hilly morphology having low to moderately steep slopes over Pliocene silty-clay sediment.
This environment has been affected in recent decades by signicant land use changes: from pasture to grain cultivation in monoculture which triggered soil
degradation and erosion with gullies and local small biancana badlands. Land use: cropland. Dominant soil families: Typic Endoaquents, Vertic Haploxerepts
and Vertic Calcixerepts
 L. Borselli et al. / Catena 97 (2012) 8594 91

discontinuity due to soil type borders. Here no sophisticated analysis
is proposed to solve this problem as it is beyond the scope of this
paper.
The precise reason behind the differences in soil erodibility due to
climate is not yet known. A possible explanation may be that clay
soils tend to have much larger inltration rates in a warm climate
where they may have cracks which remain open during the whole
year. At the same time soil organic matter will be mineralised more
quickly resulting in a lower soil aggregate stability. Laterization of
soil and the dynamics of sexquioxides are processes typical of warm
climate resulting in a larger soil resistance. Still other processes can
be suggested and all these observations point to the fact that more re-
search is needed in order to move forward and beyond the intrinsic
limits of soil erodibility denitions such as the one used by the USLE.
The results shown in Fig. 6a, b indicate a strong sensitivity of
USLE-type erosion models used for the assessment of annual/monthly

Fig. 5. Spatial distribution of soil erodibility (K, in SI units) in the Esaro catchment: a) soil erodibility computed using the nomograph by Wischmeier et al. (1971) (Kw); b) mean
soil erodibility predicted by KUERY for a warm/temperate climate (K Warm; current situation)c) mean soil erodibility predicted by KUERY for a cool/temperate climate (K Cool;
hypothetical scenario.
92 L. Borselli et al. / Catena 97 (2012) 8594
Fig. 5(continued).
soil erosion rate to K values obtained by the KUERY algorithm. This
conrms the ndings of Borselli et al. (2009) for a similar application
in a watershed in central Italy. In the case of Esaro catchment 80% of
the area shows signicant large differences (+38%, 59% ) between
K-values calculated with KUERY and Kw calculated using the nomo-
graph (Wischmeier et al., 1971). Under a hypothetical cool climate
scenario this difference may rise up to +160%. The percentage of dif-
ference found between K values will produce an equal difference in
soil erosion rate computed with the K factors in USLE-Type Models
(Borselli et al., 2009).
These results suggest that the procedure for calculating the K fac-
tor, due to its large effect on soil erosion rate assessments and its en-
vironmental relevance for future climate change scenarios, needs a
complete reappraisal using a large global soil/climate erodibility data-
base and new analysis tools.
KUERY algorithm is a promising novel techniques and while waiting
for better soil erodibility datasets to be collected, the KUERY algorithm
can help producing K-probability distributions for a range of soil types
and climate conditions. The last version of the software (KUERY 1.3) is
available as freeware for the scientic community on the website:
http://www.lorenzo-borselli.eu/kuery
4. Conclusions
The KUERY algorithm is a new tool allowing a more robust assess-
ment of the probability distribution of erodibility values, used in
USLE-type soil erosion models, for soils found worldwide and under
different climates. The new algorithm allows a rapid assessment of
soil erodibility (K), by a query to a pre-processed soil database and
climatic groups (Salvador Sanchis et al., 2008; Torri et al., 1997),
using a specic freeware software (KUERY 1.3). An application of
this algorithm to a catchment in the Mediterranean demonstrates
the potential use of the KUERY algorithm. The new assessment proce-
dure produces a set of parametric and non-parametric statistics of soil
erodibility (K) values as well as an estimate of the uncertainty distri-
bution derived from data for similar soils in the global dataset. The
nal user has the choice to select the most appropriate value of K,
depending on additional soil information (Borselli et al., 2009)
which was usually not present in detail in previous soil erodibility as-
sessments. The climatic effects on soil erodibility, reported by Sanchis
et al. (2008), are always clearly shown by the KUERY output. A com-
parison between the new mean soil erodibility values obtained by the
KUERY algorithm with the classical ones calculated using a nomo-
graph (Wischmeier et al., 1971) shows large differences. These large
differences, i.e. between 59% and +160%, produce an equivalent
percentage of difference in soil loss rates predicted by USLE-type
soil erosion models. The KUERY algorithm and software is rec-
ommended for a more reliable assessment of soil erodibility worldwide.
Acknowledgements
This research was partly funded by the European Commission,
Directorate-General of Research, Global Change and Desertication
Programme, Project No. GOCE-CT-2003-505361 (RECONDES), and
the European Integrated Project: GOCE 20070370462, Desertication
Mitigation and Remediation of Landa global approach for local solu-
tions (DESIRE). Regione Calabria contributed through POR Calabria
20002006, asse 1risorse naturali. misura 1.4sistemi insediativi,
azione 1.4.cazioni di studio, programmazione, sperimentazione,
monitoraggio, valutazione e informazione nalizzati alla predisposizione
e gestione di politiche integrate d'intervento di difesa del suolo, lotto
progettuale n.2, pericolosit legata ai fenomeni di intensa erosione idrica
areale e lineare.
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