In the paper titled “Pronounced Increases in Future Soil Erosion and Sediment Deposition as Influenced by Freeze–Thaw Cycles in the Upper Mississippi River Basin”, the researchers aimed to project future soil erosion and sediment deposition in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB) using climate projections by five Global Circulation Models (GCMs) under the Representative Concentrations Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario. To account for freeze-thaw cycles (FTCs), this study compared two Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) models with different representations of the FTCs.

Modeling results show that future climate change can significantly intensify soil erosion and increase sediment deposition, and the impacts are sensitive to how FTCs are represented in the model. The standard SWAT projected an increase in soil erosion by nearly 40% by the end of the 21st century, which is much lower than the projected over 65% increase in soil erosion by SWAT-FT. For sediment deposition, the projected percent changes by the standard SWAT and SWAT-FT also deviate from each other. 

Overall, these results demonstrate the important roles of FTCs in projecting future soil erosion and sediment deposition and underline the need to consider the effects of conservation practices on FTCs to realistically assess the effectiveness of those measures.

For details: https://news.essic.umd.edu/climate-change-can-intensify-soil-erosion-and-sediment-deposition/