Application of the Landsoil model to simulate water and tillage erosion in an intensively farmed landscape submitted to land consolidation with contrasting soil types

International audience; Among the various existing soil erosion models, the Landsoil model has recently been developed to spatially simulate both water and tillage erosion at the event scale. The aim is to apply this model to an intensively farmed area that has been submitted to an important land consolidation in the 1960s, in order to assess the evolution of past and still existing lynchets. The 240 ha study site is located in Seuilly, in the south western Parisian basin (France). The area is mostly under crop cultivation. Monthly calendars of soil surface characteristics have been established for each main crop, and are for the first time adapted to account for the major soil variations observed in the study area. A detailed DEM has been computed using LIDAR data. These data had to be carefully filtered to remove any non-perennial microtopographic feature. 6 mn rainfall data were used to characterize the rainfall events. As the site is not instrumented, the effect of infiltration capacity and suspended sediment load values is approximated. Results show a very contrasted soil redistribution in the study area, mainly due to the different soil types, thus leading to a contrasted morphological evolution of the landscape. The upper, predominantly flat part of the study site with silty soils is mainly under the influence of water erosion, whereas the lower, calcareous and clayey part of the site is mostly under the influence of tillage redistribution processes, leading a progressive flattening of the former lynchets, whereas current lynchets are still developing.