REVIEW AND COMPARISON OF WATER EROSION INTENSITY IN THE WESTERN BALKAN AND EU COUNTRIES

Abstract

The south and southeast region of Europe is significantly prone to water erosion. In parts of the region, erosion has reached a stage of irreversibility and in some places erosion has practically ceased because there is no soil left. In the recent period several models and approaches in a GIS environment were developed using available database for erosion factors on the European level on which data about water erosion in Western Balkan countries is missing. Sci-entists in the Western Balkan countries faced with the erosion problem for years, developed own models or prepared various erosion risk maps using national databases. The aim of this study is to compare results of water erosion inten-sity in the Western Balkan countries using models on wider level (European maps) and national researches. The basic methodological approach in this paper is an analysis of secondary data, using the method of "content analysis" of various data sources. Inductive and deductive qualitative analyses were used and finally the method of "comparative analysis" is applied, too. Through the analysis of national researches it was estimated that erosion intensity in the WB countries is 656 m3/ha (similar to 6.56 t/ha) and the total amount of annual produced erosive material is 373.8·106 m3. The most erosive countries in Europe are Albania and Montenegro where mean annual intensity of erosion is > 10 t/ha. Macedonia together with Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Romania is in the second group of countries, where ero-sion intensity is 5–10 t/ha.