Rastipishe et al. (2026) Water-Driven Soil Erosion in Iran’s Agricultural Lands: A Nationwide Synthesis of Drivers, Impacts and Management

Identification

• Journal: Earth Systems and Environment
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-02-25
• Authors: Bahare Rastipishe, Saeedreza Moazeni, Ali Salajegheh, A. Cerda
• DOI: 10.1007/s41748-026-01073-y

Research Groups

• Department of Reclamation of Arid and Mountainous Regions, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
• Soil Erosion and Degradation Research Group, Department of Geography, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

Short Summary

This systematic review synthesizes evidence from 399 peer-reviewed studies to evaluate the drivers, impacts, assessment, and management of water-driven soil erosion across Iran's agricultural lands. It reveals a mean annual soil erosion rate of 16.5 t ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ nationwide, underscoring the critical need for integrated, climate-resilient management strategies.

Objective

• To identify dominant natural and anthropogenic drivers of water-induced soil erosion across Iran.
• To clarify the documented impacts of erosion on soil properties, agricultural productivity, and water resources.
• To critically evaluate the context-specific effectiveness of conservation and mitigation strategies for soil erosion in Iran.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Nationwide (Iran), country-scale, regional, watershed, field, and plot scales.
• Temporal Scale: Literature review up to 2024, analyzing long-term trends, annual, seasonal, and decadal changes.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE), Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP), G2 model, Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Multiple Linear Regression (MLR), ICONA–AHP.
• Data sources: Systematic review of 399 English peer-reviewed articles from Scopus and Web of Science databases, satellite remote sensing (Sentinel-2 MSI, Landsat 8, SRTM, ASTER), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), field measurements (erosion plots, rainfall simulation, sediment sampling), Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms, Structure-from-Motion (SfM) techniques, and bibliometric analysis (VOSviewer, RStudio).

Main Results

• Iran experiences a mean annual soil erosion rate of approximately 16.5 t ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹, leading to an estimated 2.7 billion tons of soil loss per year nationwide.
• Dominant natural drivers include high-intensity rainfall events, steep slopes (≥ 15–25%), erodible calcareous soils, and low soil organic carbon content.
• Key human-induced factors accelerating erosion are intensive tillage, crop residue removal, overgrazing, irrigation mismanagement, and land-use conversion.
• Impacts include significant declines in soil organic carbon (up to 53%) and nutrient stocks, increased agricultural production costs (estimated at 12.8 billion US dollars annually), sedimentation of water channels and reservoirs, and pollution of water resources.
• Conservation agriculture, contour farming, terracing, agroforestry windbreaks, and biological stabilization measures (e.g., cyanobacterial biological soil crusts, microbial-induced calcite precipitation) are effective in reducing runoff and soil loss.
• Cyanobacterial biological soil crusts and microbial-induced calcite precipitation demonstrated soil-loss reductions approaching 99% in controlled/pilot-scale applications, while structural and agronomic practices typically reduced erosion by 40–60% under field conditions.
• Research on soil erosion in Iran has seen a substantial increase since 2018, with growing adoption of remote sensing, RUSLE-based modeling, and watershed-scale analyses.
• Climate change is projected to increase erosion risk by 20–30% by 2030.

Contributions

• Provides the first nationwide, systematic synthesis of water-driven soil erosion in Iran, integrating drivers, impacts, assessment methods, and management strategies from a fragmented body of literature.
• Combines a structured narrative synthesis with a bibliometric analysis to identify research trends, knowledge gaps (e.g., in southern and eastern provinces), and regional disparities in erosion research.
• Offers a policy-relevant perspective by linking scientific evidence to practical management strategies and highlighting the need for nationally integrated monitoring and climate-resilient agricultural planning.
• Quantifies the severity of soil erosion at a national scale and evaluates the effectiveness of various conservation measures, including novel biological approaches, under Iranian agroecological conditions.

Funding

Funding information for this research was not explicitly provided in the paper.

Citation

@article{Rastipishe2026WaterDriven,
  author = {Rastipishe, Bahare and Moazeni, Saeedreza and Salajegheh, Ali and Cerda, A.},
  title = {Water-Driven Soil Erosion in Iran’s Agricultural Lands: A Nationwide Synthesis of Drivers, Impacts and Management},
  journal = {Earth Systems and Environment},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1007/s41748-026-01073-y},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s41748-026-01073-y}
}

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