Soil erosion rates are not telling you what you might think, 2026

Commonly cited soil erosion rates from tools like the NRI and DEP capture only sheet and rill erosion on small hillslope segments, not total soil loss across entire fields or watersheds. Yet they are routinely misapplied in both peer-reviewed literature and public media. This misuse distorts our understanding of land degradation and misdirects billions of dollars in farm subsidies and conservation cost-share payments. The authors call for modernizing how we communicate erosion data, moving beyond simple averages toward spatial distributions and integrating lidar and remote sensing to capture the full picture of soil movement at the field scale.