In view of the climate crisis, adjustments are urgently needed to prevent significant losses in agricultural productivity due to soil erosion and to strengthen Luxembourg's agriculture in the long term. Although many farmers are already adapting to changing climate conditions, there is an acute need for well-founded studies to develop modern, practical guidelines. In particular, these should help to quantify and optimize the effectiveness and efficiency of erosion-reducing agricultural management methods and shed light on their economic viability. Against this background, the "Fonds National de la Recherche" and the "Ministère de l'Agriculture, de la Viticulture et du Développement rural" have decided to jointly fund the EROSION research project for four years. The EROSION project brings together scientists from the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) with stakeholders from the agricultural sector (CONVIS s.c.) and the Ministry in order to jointly develop practical strategies to reduce erosion and underpin these with findings from research and development. These measures are intended not only to reduce the susceptibility of agricultural land to erosion, but also to flash floods, thereby strengthening its resilience to climate change.

Objectives of the EROSION project:

As part of EROSION, we aim to develop and conduct initial tests of a process-based erosion and sediment transport model for agricultural land in Luxembourg. In the future, this new tool should provide quantitative predictions of soil erosion, water and particle fluxes as well as sediment deposition for different land use and climate change scenarios. To this end, different configurations of buffer zones will be simulated on different study plots to test their potential to slow down the rate of surface runoff and increase local infiltration and sedimentation along topographic gradients in the agricultural landscape.