Challenges in gully erosion research

Although the number of publications on gully erosion has increased over the last decade, there are still various aspects of gully erosion that deserve more research efforts. Some of these, discussed in this contribution, are gully erosion in historical times, measuring techniques, processes of gully initiation, development and infilling, the interaction between gully erosion with hydrological and other soil degradation processes (e.g. piping, landsliding, tillage erosion and erosion induced by land levelling), gully erosion models, effective and efficient gully prevention and control measures. A better understanding of these aspects would allow one to better predict the impact of environmental change, gully prevention and control measures on gully erosion and gully infilling rates at a range of temporal and spatial scales and for various types of environments, and the effects of gully erosion on sediment yield, hydrological process intensities and landscape evolution