title: Comment on "Rainfall erosivity in Europe" by Panagos et al. (Sci. Total Environ., 511, 801-814, 2015).
abstract: Recently a rainfall erosivity map has been published. We show that the values of this map contain considerable bias because (i) the temporal resolution of the rain data was insufficient, which likely underestimates rain erosivity by about 20%, (ii) no attempt had been included to account for the different time periods that were used for different countries, which can modify rain erosivity by more than 50%, (iii) and likely precipitation data had been used instead of rain data and thus rain erosivity is overestimated in areas with significant snowfall. Furthermore, the seasonal distribution of rain erosivity is not provided, which does not allow using the erosivity map for erosion prediction in many cases. Although a rain erosivity map for Europe would be highly desirable, we recommend using the national erosivity maps until these problems have been solved. Such maps are available for many European countries.
authors.affiliation: Lehrstuhl für Grünlandlehre, Technische Universität München, 85350 Freising, Germany. Electronic address: auerswald@wzw.tum.de.
authors.forename: Karl
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Auerswald
authors.affiliation: Institut für Geographie, Universität Augsburg, 86159 Augsburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Fiener
authors.affiliation: Institute for Sustainable Agriculture, CSIC, Cordoba, Spain.
authors.forename: José A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Gomez
authors.affiliation: KU Leuven, Division of Geography, Heverlee, Belgium.
authors.forename: Gerard
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Govers
authors.affiliation: Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK.
authors.forename: John N
authors.initials: JN
authors.lastname: Quinton
authors.affiliation: Federal Agency for Water Management, 3252 Petzenkirchen, Austria.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Strauss
keywords: R factor; Rain; Soil erosion