Ms. Ref. No.

: STOTEN-D-20-30403

Title: High-resolution soil erodibility map of Brazil

Journal: Science of the Total Environment

Dear Prof. Paulo Pereira

Associate Editor

Please find attached a revised version of our manuscript entitled “High-resolution

soil erodibility map of Brazil”. We are also sending the items: Manuscript Changes
Noted, and Response to Reviewers' comments.

Please, note that original reviewer comments are in black and author responses
are in blue. In the "Changes Noted" we highlight in yellow the changes made in the
text that are indicated in our responses to the comments of Reviewers.

We would like to thank you and the anonymous Reviewers for your insightful
comments, suggestions, and kind words in support of our manuscript. The
manuscript was deeply revised thanks to the comments of all reviewers. We thank
you for all the suggestions, which were highly insightful and enabled us to improve
the quality of our manuscript. With the updated presented manuscript, we took
care to answer the reviewer’s questions and comments as well as your editorial
request.

We hope that the revisions in the manuscript and our accompanying responses
will now meet the requirements for publication in Science of the Total Environment.

Please do not hesitate if you have any further questions or concerns.

Thank you again for your consideration.

Raquel de Faria Godoi

on behalf of all co-authors

(Remarks to authors in black; Responses in blue)

Reviewers/Editor comments:

Dear Dr Raquel,

Please see below the reviewers comments to your article. The reviewer 1 sent
some comments in a PDF attached. The reviewer 2 asked you to see some
references. Please see this with criticism and include them only if they add an
important information to the work. The paper acceptance/rejection will not
depend of the inclusion/not inclusion of these references

Sincerely

Dear Editor,

We are very grateful for the opportunity to revise and resubmit our manuscript.
Your comments and those of the reviewers were highly insightful and enabled us
to greatly improve the quality of our manuscript. We have revised the manuscript
according to all concerns and suggestions raised and hope they meet the
requirements for publication in Science of the Total Environment.

We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Best Regards,

Raquel Godoi
Reviewer #1

This paper attempts to extract USLE K-factor from a data set that is itself modelled.
The derivation of this data set is inadequately described and provides no
assessment of its accuracy. The field data against which the results are tested are
thin. The paper, consequently, has some interest, but the results cannot be treated
with any degree of confidence. In its present form I do not rate the paper as worthy
of publication, but maybe the authors can address its weaknesses to make it so.
Detailed comments are given in the annotated pdf.

We thank the reviewer for all the comments.

In this study, we develop the first high resolution soil erodibility map across Brazil.
We strive to collect all information available to compute the soil erodibility with a
high resolution and then we compare with all experimental studies developed in
the country using natural and simulated rainfall. We reviewed the ISI Web of
Science, SciELO, and Google Scholar databases looking for records with the terms
“erodibility”, “K-factor”, and “Brazil” in the period of 1982 to July 2020. We
considered records from scientific journal publications, conference papers, M.Sc.
theses, Ph.D. dissertations, books and also gray literature. We organized a database
of observed soil erodibility containing information about soil type, rain method,
plot site, initial and final time of experiment. We also discuss the uncertainty and
limitation of our findings. It is important to make clear that this is the first effort to
a better understand of the soil erodibility across Brazil.
We believe that our results provide benchmark values of soil erodibility across the
country that will be useful mainly to evaluate soil erosion by water and wind, soil
degradation, soil and water conservation planning. Considering that Brazil has a
rich water environmental resources, is one of the biggest worldwide producers
and exporters of food, and that the Brazilian energy matrix depends on
hydroelectricity, our findings are very important to contributing to a better land-
use planning and management, and therefore to guarantee water-food-energy
security in Brazil.

L29-31 why is this relevant? and L239 It is not clear what point is being made in
this paragraph (referring to the mentioned erodibility values of other countries)

We thank the reviewer for this note. We removed this part of the abstract to make
it more concise. However, we decided to keep it in the discussion section.
Comparing our computed k-factor values with that obtained in other countries is
important to a better understand and discuss of the magnitude of k-factor values.
L71 The introduction up to this point is of marginal relevance to the content of the
paper, and could be eliminated. An introduction that better focuses on the aim of
the paper would be an improvement

We understand that the mentioned paragraphs contribute to substantiating our

arguments on the necessity of soil erosion mapping to sustain water, food, and
energy security. Therefore, we prefer to keep it.

L124-129 Since this system provides the key input to the K-factor estimation more
detail is required. Essentially this is modelled input to a model so some estimation
of its uncertainty is needed here.

We understand that each input parameter carries some uncertainty that

propagates to the final outcome. Moreover, even the measured data used in the
validation process are prone to errors. However, soil erosion models have been
extensively compared to measured datasets (Risse et al., 1993; Rapp, 1994;
Panagos et al., 2014; Bagarello et al., 2012; Auerswald et al., 2003) and even
though the deviations may seem substantial when comparing gross (modeled)
data to net (observed) data, the results are reasonably accurate for most practical
purposes.

As pointed by Alewell et al. (2019) and Garcia-Ruiz et al. (2015), we should not
expect to accurately predict absolute values with erosion models, but rather focus
on the relative differences, on the trends over time and on the reactions to
environmental changes. In our study, we intend to trace the pattern of soil
erodibility of the Brazilian soils, as well as to identify the risk areas in order to
support the land-use planning and the application of soil and water conservation
strategies. Our produced soil erodibility map is a great contribution for the
understanding of erosion potential of Brazil. Furthermore, our approach is in
accordance with a similar and highly cited study that developed a soil erodibility
map for Europe (Panagos et al., 2014)

Since the mean is very, very far from the midpoint of the two extremes some
indication of the statistical distribution of the data would be useful. And why give
the mean when later data give the median?

Thank you! We inserted a table containing the statistical summary of our results
(p. 12, L248). The median is later given since it is used in the Mann-Whitney test.

Whilst it may be reasonable to start the results section with a comparison of the
two methods, discussion of the actual results in relation to soils around Brazil is
premature until we have some indication that these results bear any relation to
reality

Thanks for your suggestion. We moved the discussion of the results concerning the
characteristics of the soils to a new section after the validation section. p. 18, L345

This is an inappropriate test of the statistical test. The test is designed to be a test
of difference. It is therefore biased in favour of failing to find any. What you are
trying to show is that the two data sets are comparable, so the p value of difference
is not relevant. You would probably find that if you increase p to 0.1 or 0.2 you find
they are not the same.

To evaluate the difference between observed and estimated K-factor, we use the
non-parametric Mann-Whitney test with a 95% confidence level. This test is
appropriate for our data characteristics since our samples are independent and do
not follow a normal distribution. We found out that there is difference between K obs
and KEPIC for most soil groups (for a 95% confidence level), while for K nomo there is
no significant difference between modeled and observed for most soil groups.

From here on does not belong in this section which deals with comparison of
modelled and observed data

We moved this paragraph to the section after validation. p. 21-22, L418-424

Reviewer #2

Dear Author, Dear Editor,

General considerations

The manuscript deals about the realisation of a high-resolution soil erodibility map
of the Brazil.

The subject is of general interest and useful for improving knowledge on soil
properties at global scale. The study is supported by the available observations at
plot scale in the country.

The research is sufficiently well described, methodology for modelling is enough

clear, data from bibliography too, maybe needing some integrations.

The conclusions of the research are in line with general knowledge of the subject
and can contribute to new advances. On our opinion, we agree for publication with
a few corrections as suggested.

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for his/her kind words in support
of our paper and for suggesting improvements to the manuscript. We are going to
address each of your comments carefully.

Graphical abstract

Appropriate

Thanks!

Highlights
- Maybe too much emphasis in "for the first time", we suggest say what was done.

Thanks for your suggestion. We removed this part of the sentence.

Material and Methods

L179-185
- For the algebraic approximation of the nomograph, please, use also the reference
of Renard et al. (1997):

Renard, KG., Foster, GR., Weessies, G.A., McCool, D.K. (1997). Predicting soil erosion
by water: a guide to conservation planning with the Revised Universal Soil Loss
Equation (RUSLE). In: Yoder DC, editor. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture
Handbook 703.

Done. p. 6, L142-145
L188-193
- Where 0.1317 is to SI metric system conversion…

Thanks for the suggestion. We described the conversion factor in p. 7, L157 and p.
10, L213.

Results and Discussion

L323-324
- Figurexx and Tablexx we suppose stand for S1.

Thank you!! We fixed that. p. 15, L278.

- Could be added the reference of the data? That's 33 studies.

Noted with thanks. A table containing all the referred citations has been added to
the supplementary material, as well as the references.

- Are some other studies available for K factor in literature (eg. Cassol et al 2018)
can be added to the paper? Cassol EA, Silva TS, Eltz FLF, Levien R. Soil erodibility
under natural rainfall conditions as the K factor of the universal soil loss equation
and application of the nomograph for a subtropical Ultisol. Rev Bras Cienc Solo.
2018;42:e0170262.

Thank you for your suggestion. This study was already included in our literature
compilation. It is possible to check the references in the revised supplementary
information.

L334
- We notice that the soil groups which have more variability (higher or lower for
one or other method) are Gleysols, L260; Arenosols, L296; Plinthosols, L306. Once
no observations are available for such type of soils (fig. 8), something more should
be state (L392 and following) to evidence the significance of the study (lack on
validation/verification on some of the more sensible soil types).
- Validation is here done without calibration of the data, only applying the
nomograph for general soils (even with considerations on silt% and OC%).
Something should be maybe added on that.

Thank you for the comment. We better discussed the divergences (see p. 20-21,
L390-417). We inserted into the supplementary material a boxplot showing the
fraction of sand, silt, and clay of each soil group to support our discussion.
The divergences can be explained by the high correlation of EPIC with sand and silt
fraction (p = -0.8092 and p = 0.9933 respectively). On the other hand, the USLE
erodibility correlates positively with soil structure (p = 0.7691), resulting in
lessened erodibility for soils with finer structure.

For instance, both arenosols and ferralsols have high sand content. However,
arenosols reach the highest sand fraction levels, in exchange for low silt fraction,
which reduces soil erodibility. On the other hand, ferralsols have finer structure
than arenosols, resulting in lower erodibility estimated by USLE nomograph.

Our literature review includes one sample for PT. Even though it is a single sample,
it was collected taking into account Wischmeier and Smith (1978) requisites.

Summary and Conclusions

Ok

Thanks!

Aknowledgements
L430-432
- Missing the nation of reference of Ministry etc… for the grant.

Noted with thanks. We inserted the nation of reference: “This study was supported
by grants from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Brazil – MCTI
and The Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development –
CNPq”. p. 23, L455-457
Reviewer #3

Review of article: "High-resolution soil erodibility map of Brazil"

Summary: I like the overall objective of this paper and that the USLE K-factor
dataset has been made freely available. I commend the authors on a job well done
for this; making a national K-factor map is a great deal of work. However, the
English writing and flow of the document make it very difficult for a reader to
follow. I began to review the document for grammatical corrections, but there are
too many grammatical/structural mistakes for me to review the document in a
reasonable time frame. I highlight some of these issues that need to be fixed and
some other flaws in the document that should be changed. Please see my
comments below:

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for his/her kind words in support
of our paper and for suggesting improvements to the manuscript. We are going to
address each of your comments carefully.

Citations: Some of the citations do not line up with what you write about in-text;
please double check that the numerical citations line up with the source document.
For example:

Lines 55 - 57: "It is estimated that water erosion reduces global agricultural food
production in 33.7 million tonnes, being that for Brazil, a leading international food
supplier (OECD-FAO, 57 2015), the losses are estimated as 8.2 million tonnes
(Sartori et al., 2019)." The Sartori citation indicates that the crop output decrease
would be 6.3 million tonnes for Brazil, most notably for sugar, and a global crop
output decrease of 22.5 million. This does not line up with your text. Please double
check this reference.

Thank you for the comment. Our citation refers to decrease in agri-food production
(crop activities + livestock and food activities). It is possible to verify the cited
numbers in Sartori et al. Table 2A (changes in crop activities) and Table 2B (total
agrifood changes). In Table 2A we see that Brazil’s decrease in crop output is 6.330
million tonnes. In Table 2B the last column refers to total agrifood changes (i.e.
livestock and food activities plus crop activities aforementioned in Table 2A)
which equals 8.170 million tonnes for Brazil. 1.708 million tonnes.

Lines 344 - 346: "it is recommended to collect soil loss data under natural rain for
at least 5 years, after leaving the plot in clean fallow condition for 2 years
(Wischmeier and Smith, 1978)." I cannot find any information about collecting
soils loss data for at least 5 years from this data source. Perhaps double check that
this reference is correct and include a page number reference since the document
is quite lengthy.
Noted with thanks! We agree to the reviewer and included the page number
reference to make it clearer, see p. 16, L299. We appreciate your suggestion.

The mentioned information can be found in the page 57 of USDA-Agriculture

Handbook, 537, 1978:

“A unit plot is a 22-m length of uniform 9 percent slope that has been in clean fallow
for more than 2 years and is tilled to prevent vegetative growth and surface crusting
during the period of soil loss measurement . . . The most accurate direct
measurement of K for a given soil is obtained by measuring soil losses from unit plots
under natural rain for at least 5 years, beginning 2 years after the clean-fallow
condition was established.”

Standardized names: See lines 80-83. The USLE factors all have well established
names in Agricultural Handbook no. 537. Use the standardized names in your
writing:
R -> rainfall and runoff factor

K -> soil erodibility factor

L -> slope-length factor

S -> slope-steepness factor

C -> cover and management factor

P -> supporting practice factor

Thank you for the comment. We changed the name of the factors to the
standardized names in Agricultural Handbook no. 537. p. 4, L85-90.

Plagiarism: It is very evident in your writing style that sentence are copied
verbatim from other sources. Rewording sentences by changing a single word and
switching tenses in not appropriate. For example:

(1)     Line 73 - 75: "The lack of erosion data sets creates knowledge gaps in climate
change and carbon mitigation scenarios, hydrology and flood prediction"
Alewell et al. 2019: "the lack of large scale erosion rate data sets also creates
knowledge gaps in climate change and carbon mitigation scenarios, hydrology and
flood prediction"
(2)     Line 157 - 159: "well-structured soil, i.e. with a high degree of stability of
aggregates, has an important role in improving soil fertility, increasing agronomic
productivity, enhancing porosity and decreasing erodibility (Bronick and Lal,
2005).
Bronick and Lal 2005: "Favorable soil structure and high aggregate stability are
important to improving soil fertility, increasing agronomic productivity, enhancing
porosity and decreasing erodibility."
Fix all these instances of verbatim copying from other manuscripts in your
introduction.
Noted with thanks. We rephrased all those sentences.

p. 4, L78-80 “The lack of erosion data impairs the discussion on environmental and
agricultural policies to achieve global sustainability goals”.

p. 8, L174-176 “Well-structured soils with a high degree of aggregate stability evince

improved soil fertility and diminished erodibility”.

Grammar:
Double check the use of definite and indefinite articles throughout the manuscript.
Double check that the subject of each sentence is well defined (e.g., many of your
sentences are not stand-alone and the reader needs to look back 1-2 sentences to
understand the subject of your sentence). Please makes sure every sentence has a
clearly defined subject, predicate, and represents a complete thought. Remove
superfluous conjunctive adverbs (e.g., "also", "therefore", "thus") where
appropriate. Fix sentences that use an excessive number of commas.

Some examples of grammatical problems, poor writing styles, or general critiques

are below:
Lines 16 - 18 "The K factor is a complex property that expresses the susceptibility
of soil to erode according to its inherent characteristics." or lines 83 - 84 "The K-
factor is a complex property that expresses the susceptibility degree of a soil to
erode."
You are not telling the reader any pertinent information with these sentences.
Describe what the K factor is according to the agricultural handbook (e.g., the K
factor is the soil erodibility factor that describes the soil loss rate of a soil relative
to the conditions of a bare fallow unit plot; the K factor is a function of the soil
texture, particle-size parameter, percent organic matter, soil-structure code, and
profile-permeability class; the equation you are using is a nomograph solution for
soils containing less than 70% silt and very fine sand).

We do appreciate your suggestion! This certainly helped us improve our

manuscript. We revised all of the manuscript focusing on these mentioned
grammatical errors. Some of the alterations are presented below.

p.4, L91-93 “The rate of soil erosion diverges for different soils when slope, rainfall,
cover and management factors are the same; this difference results from the soil
properties only and represents the soil erodibility”.

Lines 49 - 51: "If we further consider the effects of climate change in rainfall
erosivity patterns in Brazil (Almagro et al., 2017), the need of creating strategies
and public policies of soil management to enhance water, food and energy security
becomes more evident."

What are the effects of climate change in the rainfall patterns in Brazil? How does
this relate to food security? Why are public policies needed specifically for soil
management in Brazil?

p. 3, L54-62 “The projected decrease in rainfall patterns over the North, Northeast,
Central-West, and Southeast regions of Brazil encourages the expansion of
agricultural production in these regions, supporting food security (Almagro et al.,
2017). However, this expansion may result in the conversion of natural land cover to
croplands and pasture, increasing the soil loss rate (Oliveira et al., 2015). While in
the South, the projected increase in rainfall erosivity tends to affect food production
by increasing soil loss rate and consequently decreasing soil fertility (Almagro et al.,
2017). The effects of climate change on rainfall erosivity patterns in Brazil highlight
the need of creating strategies and public policies of soil management aiming to
ensure water, food, and energy security”.

Lines 168 - 169: "The permeability can be described as a function of soil texture,
structure, and bulk density. It describes the velocity at which water percolates
through soil."
The subject of the second sentence is not defined. These two sentences can easily
be joined into one sentence to make your writing clearer. You have a large number
of this type of sentence structuring in your document where merging the two
sentences would be beneficial.

Line 169-170: "In highly permeable soils, water enters rapidly, reducing runoff
and, consequently, soil erosion". Excessive use of commas and poor sentence
structure.

Thank you for the comment.

p. 8, 185-187 “Soil permeability is a function of soil texture, structure, and bulk

density and describes the velocity at which water percolates through the soil. Water
quickly enters highly permeable soils, reducing runoff and consequently soil erosion”.

Lines 177 - 178: "It consists of numerous physical components that describe
erosion/productivity relationship."

Define the subject of the second sentence. What is 'it' referring to; be clear. This
sentence provides no information to the reader, describe why EPIC is different
than USLE and provide some detail for the reader.

Lines 179 - 180: "Water erosion calculation is based on USLE and K is the soil
erodibility factor."
The water erosion calculation of what? Define the subject of your sentence. How is
it different? Be more detailed in your writing. Why do you restate that K is the soil
erodibility factor?

Thank you for the comment.

p. 9, L192-199 “EPIC (Erosion-Productivity Impact Calculator) was specifically

designed for determining the relationship between soil erosion and soil productivity
(Williams et al., 1983). This model consists of numerous physical components that
describe the erosion/productivity relationship. Besides water erosion, EPIC model
components include hydrology, nutrient dynamics, plant growth, soil temperature,
tillage, and economics.

The calculation of soil erosion by water is based on USLE, i.e., by the multiplication of
the six aforementioned factors and including the coarse fragment factor. Soil
erodibility is given simply by the relation of soil particle size and the organic carbon
content”.

Lines 202 - 213: "To compile soil erodibility direct measurements in Brazil we
reviewed the ISI Web of Science, SciELO, and Google Scholar databases. We looked
for the combination of terms "erodibility", "K-factor" and "Brazil". The search was
also done in Portuguese. The period was set from 1982 to July 2020. We
considered records from scientific journal publications, 206 conference papers,
M.Sc. theses, Ph.D. dissertations and books. Considering the scarcity of plot-scale
data in Brazil, gray literature was also considered. The records were added to the
dataset on the conditions that they were direct measured, inform the soil type and
present at least minimal information about the experiment. We organized a
database of observed soil erodibility containing information about soil type, rain
method, plot site, initial and final time of experiment. We collected data of both
natural and simulated rainfall in different areas of the five regions of Brazil."
You need to be more concise with your writing, these three paragraphs could be
reworded to two sentences. The literature review should not be in your results
(Section 3.2) but should be represented here in your methods. The comparison of
K-values from your literature review should be what is shown in the results. You
should include the documents you reviewed in the appendix/supplementary
material of your manuscript.

We appreciate the reviewer’s suggestion. We redrafted this section aiming to make

it succinct. We have also included the collected data to the supplementary material.
We understand that what we present in Section 3.2 p. 15-16, L277-304 is part of
our results and contribute to the discussion.

Line 274-275: "This induces to the long-discussed importance of protection of

Amazon rainforest." Define the subject of the sentence. What is 'this'? Poor
sentence structure. I'm unsure what the authors are saying with this sentence.
We redrafted this sentence defining the subject:

“The risk of deforestation in areas of high soil erodibility induces to the long-
discussed importance of protecting the Amazon rainforest”. p. 19, L369-371

Line 332 - 333: "Concerning the soil type, ferralsols and acrisols are the ones with
greater numbers of studies, which are also the predominant: together they occupy
58% of the Brazilian territory." Incorrect use of colon and poor sentence structure.

We have rewritten this sentence in order to improve the structure and make it
clearer: “Ferralsols and acrisols together occupy 58% of the Brazilian territory and
are the soil types with greater number of studies”. p. 15, L286-287

Line 329: "In the Northeast, researches on soil erosion were enhanced between the
1980s and the 1990s". Incorrect grammar.

We have rewritten this sentence to “Research on soil erosion intensified in the 1980s
and 1990s in the Northeast”. p. 15, L283-284

Line 353-355: "As pointed by Alewell et al. (2019), the process of validation of
USLE-type applications is usually carried out in the most rigorous approach of
validation, since the model algorithms are per se not calibrated and compare the
outcomes to measured data" This sentence needs to be rewritten, I'm not sure
what the authors are trying to say.

Thanks for your note. The sentence was reformulated to make it clearer:

“As pointed by Alewell et al. (2019), the process of validation of USLE-type

applications is usually carried out in the most rigorous possible way, i.e., even though
the model algorithms are not calibrated, the resulting outputs are compared to
measured data”. p. 16, L306-308.

Line 367-368: "Since KEPIC estimates are in general in a higher scale than Kobs,
the error is, as expected, greater for this model." Poor sentence structure.

Noted with thanks. We have redrafted this sentence:

“The K-factor values estimated by EPIC are in a higher range than the observed
values, making the error greater for this model”. p. 17, L320-323

Clarification needed:

Line 117 - 121 you state that "the objective of this study is to compute the first
high-resolution soil erodibility map across Brazil". Please give some more detail in
this paragraph that highlights what you are actually doing in this paper. For
example: (1) creating a K-value raster for Brazil with EPIC and the USLE, (2)
benchmarking/validating your K-value rasters using plot-based measurements,
(3) spatial analysis of soil erodibility, and (4) ____________. Be more descriptive
about your objectives.

Thank you for your suggestion. We reformulated this paragraph aiming to make
our objectives clear. p. 6, L127-132

Lines 181 - 182 you state that: "The equation (Equation 2) allows K to vary from
about 0.1 to 0.5" but the values expressed in your EPIC results range from 0.0209
to 0.0576. I may be misunderstanding your values, but this appears to be a
contradiction. Some clarification is needed.

Noted with thanks! The mentioned values were in the US customary system. We
have included the range in SI metric units (0.0132 to 0.0659). p. 9, L200

Line 196: "EPIC input data had the same approaches as the USLE nomograph, that
is: organic carbon limited to 2% (i.e., SOC = SOM/2)". Some more clarification is
needed for this point. I'm not familiar with the soils of your study area, but 2%
seems like a low value as a cap. Perhaps add in an additional citation indicating
what the SOM of your soils is on average would be helpful for the reader.

We inserted a table containing the summary of the input soil property values p.
12, L248. The proposal of setting an upper limit of 2% for SOC (equivalent to
setting SOM to 4%) refers to the requirement for applying the nomograph of
Wischmeier and Smith. The nomograph was developed based on data concerning
soils with less than 4% OM so this limit should be respected. The highest values of
%OM occur under permanent forests. For this cases of permanent woodland,
Wischmeier and Smith (1978) recommend a reduction in the cover and
management factor by a factor of 0.7.

Line 239 - 244. Why are you comparing your results to other countries? Perhaps
you could include this in a discussion section, but I am really unsure why this is a
pertinent result. This seems out of place

Comparing our computed k-factor values with that obtained in other countries is
important to a better understand and discuss of the magnitude of k-factor values.

Compare the EPIC K-factor for Figure 2 and Figure 3. You should be using the same
color scale between all these figures; it is very confusing how Figure 3 has two
different scales that are different than Figure 1. Standardize your color scale.

We fixed that.
Since the highlight of your study is around the USLE and EPIC K-factor
approximations, I would like to see some more comparisons between the rasters
(e.g., spatial correlation statistics); the results are significantly different (over
100%!) between these two approaches and some discussion as to why the EPIC
approximation provides higher values would be useful. Describe why the EPIC
technique is different than the USLE technique in your results as a way of
interpreting your results.

Thank you for the comment. We improve the comparison between USLE and EPIC
K-factor approximations. (see p. 20-21, L390-417).

References

Alewell, C., Borrelli, P., Meusburger, K., & Panagos, P. (2019). Using the USLE:
Chances, challenges and limitations of soil erosion modelling. International soil and
water conservation research, 7(3), 203-225.

Auerswald, K., Kainz, M., & Fiener, P. (2003). Soil erosion potential of organic
versus conventional farming evaluated by USLE modelling of cropping statistics for
agricultural districts in Bavaria. Soil use and Management, 19(4), 305-311.

Bagarello, V., Di Stefano, C., Ferro, V., Giordano, G., Iovino, M., & Pampalone, V.
(2012). Estimating the USLE soil erodibility factor in Sicily, south Italy. Applied
Engineering in Agriculture, 28(2), 199-206.

García-Ruiz, J. M., Beguería, S., Nadal-Romero, E., Gonzá lez-Hidalgo, J. C., Lana-
Renault, N., & Sanjuá n, Y. (2015). A meta-analysis of soil erosion rates across the
world. Geomorphology, 239, 160-173.

Panagos, P., Meusburger, K., Van Liedekerke, M., Alewell, C., Hiederer, R., &
Montanarella, L. (2014). Assessing soil erosion in Europe based on data collected
through a European network. Soil science and plant nutrition, 60(1), 15-29.

Rapp, J. F. (1994). Error assessment of the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation
using natural runoff plot data.

Risse, L. M., Nearing, M. A., Laflen, J. M., & Nicks, A. D. (1993). Error assessment in
the universal soil loss equation. Soil Science society of America journal, 57(3), 825-
833.

Wischmeier, W. H., Smith, D. D. (1978). Predicting rainfall erosion losses: a guide to

conservation planning. Agriculture Handbook (No., 537). Department of
Agriculture, Science and Education Administration.