Catena 46 2001.

8587
www.elsevier.comrlocatercatena

Editorial

Soil patterns as a key controlling factor

of soil erosion by water
The 16th World Congress of Soil Science, held in Montpellier in August 1998,
emphasized the relationships between human societies and the soil cover. Among these
relationships, Soil and Water Conservation is a well identified challenge, which has
given rise to more than 50 years of research on soil erosion around the world. One of the
main concerns is to allow sustainable soil cultivation. To address this issue, plot and
field scale experimentation, measurements and modelling have enriched our knowledge
of i. the effects of factors in combination and ii. the processes themselves.
Building on this knowledge, significant effort has been done to implement hydrological and erosion models. With the development of GIS, there has been a great increase in
distributed modelling at catchment scale: if we fully accept the uncertainties and failures
as well as the successes, what have we learned?
Processes at local and field scales strongly interact, both in space and time, to create
distinctive patterns of runoff generation and erosionrdeposition at catchment scale.
For hillslopes and catchments, the failure of erosion modelling reveals the lack of
knowledge about water flow pathways infiltrationrrunoff, effects of critical discharge
local thresholds . . . . and, more generally, the effect of soil cover and soil patterns on
hydrology, together with how these processes vary with scale.
At the finest scales, soil structure and porosity, at the surface and along the profile,
are the dominant soil properties influencing hydrology and erosion. The effect of
crusting and cohesion, among others, has been clearly identified. The time dynamic of
soil structure and microtopography have a very strong control on soil hydraulic and
mechanical properties: they are now recognized as major sources of uncertainty in
measurements and modelling.
At the cultivated field scale, spatial patterning due to interactions between soil
properties, cultivation practices and climate have a very strong influence on the pattern
of ponded infiltration, the soil resistance to raindrop and flow detachment, the distribution of flow velocities, and therefore, the splash, sediment transport, rill and ephemeral.
gully initiation.
At hillslope and catchment scale, roughness at all scales appears as the main factor
controlling runoff generation, pathways and critical flow discharge. Functional spatial
interactions within slopes and catchments, between areas where runoff and erosion
occur, and the collecting networks are key question in our understanding of water and
sediment exportation.
0341-8162r01r$ - see front matter q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
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Editorial

At regional scale, only soil type, land use and climate patterns in relation to the
topography should really be considered as key controlling factors of hydrological and
soil erosion responses.
The concept of this hierarchy of responses led us to propose a symposium entitled
ASoil patterns as a key controlling factor of water andror wind erosionB, with the aim to
encourage the scientific community to contribute in organizing current knowledge in soil
hydrology and soil erosion to this Across-scaleB objective, crucial as a human scale
sustainable challenge.
This special issue of Catena reflects the flavour of this symposium: soil patterning
was mainly understood as micro-scale Asurface characteristicsB, rather than coarser scale
aspects of surface and soil profile characteristics with their interactions?.. Submitted
papers also focused only on water erosion.
The keynote paper from Mike Kirkby introduces the scale issues of soil surface
characteristics principally microtopography and crusting. on soil erosion and provides a
conceptual basis for scaling up in soil erosion modelling. This paper stresses the
influence of soil surface and above surface. properties, which may be more important in
hydrology than detailed sub-surface properties, and particularly on roughness, Athe scale
dependence of roughness is not fully understood, but it is clear that roughness occurs at
a number of scalesB: depressions concentrate ponding, and emergent roughness is able to
direct the flow.
Following this idea, several contributions focused on roughness at plot scale.
The paper of Romkens,
Helming and Prasad describes runoff and soil loss responses

of a series of experiments under controlled laboratory conditions, and stresses i. the

nonmonotonic relation between surface roughness and sediment concentration, ii. the
influence of the soil water pressure, and iii. the influence of flow patterns.
The paper of Darboux, Davy, Gascuel-Odoux and Huang shows the evolution of soil
surface roughness and flow-path connectivity in overland flow experiments, altering the
flow direction by gradual filling of depressions and connections. It shows the large
differences between initial and final stages due to the soil particle redistribution, which
creates preferential connectivities.
Planchon, Esteves, Silvera and Lapetite present the methodology, measurement and
modelling of surface storage in a groundnut field in Senegal. Using the same methodology, Planchon and Darboux give an algorithm for filling the depressions at the same
scale, from a stage of inundating the surface, and then removing the excess water.
At hillslope scale, the paper of Huang, Gascuel-Odoux and Cros-Cayot clearly show
the influence of the Catena, which leads to different hydrologic regimes and erosion.
AVariability in runoff and sediment production could be attributed to topographically
induced and localized surface variations in addition to seasonal changes in rainfall
patterns and crop canopyB. Both the results of laboratory and field experiments show the
close linkage between soil hydrology, erosion processes and sediment production.
The last two papers present an attempt of synthesis at the regional scale. Cerdan,
Souchere,
` Lecomte, Couturier and Le Bissonnais integrate the knowledge on soil surface
crusting in an expert based runoff model at regional scale in Northern France. Le
Bissonnais, Montier, Jamagne, Daroussin and King present a mapping of erosion risk for

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cultivated soils in France, which integrates the knowledge on soil susceptibility to

crusting, and is validated by the map of off-site effects observed during 10 years.
The World Congress session and this special issue are related to the work done
through the Soil Erosion Network of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program
Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems GCTE-SEN., and are also linked to the
COST action of the European Union ASoil Erosion and Global ChangeB.
Anne-Veronique
Auzet )

CEREG, UMR 7007 CNRS-ULP-ENGEES

3, rue de lArgonne
F-67083 Strasbourg Cedex, France
Jean Poesen 1
Laboratory for Experimental Geomorphology
K.U. Leuen, Redingenstraat 16
B-3000 Leuen, Belgium
Christian Valentin 2
IRD-Ambassade de France
BP 06 Vientiane, RPD Laos
E-mail address: valentinird@laopdr.com
)

Corresponding author. Tel.: q33-3-90-24-09-17; fax: q33-3-90-24-09-00.

Tel.: q32-16-32-64-25; fax: q32-16-32-64-00.
2
Tel.: q856-20-50-26-80; fax: q856-21-41-43-74r41-29-93.
1