Living with landslides: Land use on unstable hillslopes in a rural tropical mountainous environment in DR Congo.

Landslides are processes that naturally occur on numerous hillslopes across the world. In inhabited regions, landslides are commonly seen as a threat and a land degradation process. Yet, in densely-populated rural mountainous regions in the tropics, local communities have often no choice but to live on steep terrains naturally impacted by landslides. Besides, landslides may also be a source of opportunities for these communities. However, little is known on the rationale underlying land use in landslides. The aim of this study was to assess the extent, modes of valorization and degree of satisfaction of famers exploiting landslides in a populated rural mountainous environment of DR Congo (territory of Kalehe). We interviewed 82 farmers living on 57 representative landslides, these mass movements having been selected according to their characteristics (size, type) and position along the hillslopes and taking into account accessibility or safety constraints. We show that almost all landslides are being exploited by farmers and that they adapt their land use to the type of landslide. Indeed, significant contrasts are observed between landslides and the surrounding hillslopes for subsistence crops, forests, eucalyptus plantations and pasture. Farmers also adapt land use according to local variations in slope or wetness within a given landslide. Nearly half of the farmers reported that their land was more valuable inside than outside landslides. Better soil fertility, higher soil moisture, lower sand or stone content, lower slopes are some of the main factors that increase the land value, offering more favorable conditions for cropping than on land outside landslides. Despite the perceived risk of landsliding, famers settlement on unstable slopes appears justified by the immediacy of the benefits that outweigh the potential dangers. Better understanding the reasons for the settlement of populations on unstable slopes may help devise better risk reduction strategies.

Fine-resolution profile-scale data to depict the impact of tillage treatment and machine traffic on agricultural soil structure and hydrologic properties.

This data article provides high spatial resolution (1 cm) datasets and related figures of the penetrometer resistance (PR) and soil bulk density (BD) data of nine agricultural 50 × 160 cm soil profiles exposed to three tillage treatments and including a wheel track. Soil treatments are moldboard plowing (MP), deep loosening (DL), and minimum tillage (MT). It also provides bulk density data, soil moisture content at various suctions and the parameters of van Genuchten's model for 27 soil cores, and saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) of 49 soil cores. Both sample sets were sampled to cover the profile heterogeneity in two agricultural plots subjected to moldboard plowing and minimum tillage. Examples of reuse potential include (i) the use of these spatially explicit data in studies seeking to understand better and integrate the effect of treatment and machine traffic-induced soil structure in soil hydraulic and soil physical quality, and (ii) the development of pedotransfer functions with data incorporating the soil structural heterogeneity. This Data in Brief article complements the companion paper by Alonso et al. (2021) "A hybrid method for characterizing tillage-induced soil physical quality at the profile scale with fine spatial detail" in Soil and Tillage Research[1].

EUSEDcollab: a network of data from European catchments to monitor net soil erosion by water.

As a network of researchers we release an open-access database (EUSEDcollab) of water discharge and suspended sediment yield time series records collected in small to medium sized catchments in Europe. EUSEDcollab is compiled to overcome the scarcity of open-access data at relevant spatial scales for studies on runoff, soil loss by water erosion and sediment delivery. Multi-source measurement data from numerous researchers and institutions were harmonised into a common time series and metadata structure. Data reuse is facilitated through accompanying metadata descriptors providing background technical information for each monitoring station setup. Across ten European countries, EUSEDcollab covers over 1600 catchment years of data from 245 catchments at event (11 catchments), daily (22 catchments) and monthly (212 catchments) temporal resolution, and is unique in its focus on small to medium catchment drainage areas (median = 43 km2, min = 0.04 km2, max = 817 km2) with applicability for soil erosion research. We release this database with the aim of uniting people, knowledge and data through the European Union Soil Observatory (EUSO).