Using Satellite Remote Sensing and Regional Climate Change Scenario Data for Projecting Soil Erosion risk. a Case Study in Crete, Greece.

Soil erosion is considered as a major environmental problem since it seriously threatens natural resources, agriculture and the environment. This study aims to assess the impacts of a changing climate, land use and vegetation cover on the quantity of erosion processes in four catchments in the island of Crete / Greece. Modelling techniques were used to project the influence of changes of the above mentioned factors on the major determinants erosion processes at various time and space scales in the present and in the future (2050). Regional climate models from CORDEX experiment provided the essential information on shifting precipitation, and feeded into erosion model in order to assess the changes in seasonality, amount, and incidence of extreme events in the catchment areas. In addition, sophisticated classification algorithms were applied to Landsat images to collect new data sets of Land Use / Land Cover (LULC), topography and vegetation. Ca-Markov approach was employed to project the LULC changes in the broader future. The current and projected soil erosion risk was estimated with the use of RUSLE model.