Erosion and siltation

Soil erosion and siltation are serious and widespread challenges in South Africa, with significant consequences for water resource management, dam storage capacity, and aquatic ecosystem health. Erosion – driven by rainfall, overland flow, degraded vegetation cover, poor land management, and intensifying storm events – mobilises sediment that is carried into rivers, reservoirs, and estuaries. This sediment load reduces the storage capacity of dams over time, degrades water quality, smothers aquatic habitats, and increases the costs of water treatment. South Africa loses considerable dam storage capacity to siltation each year, making erosion monitoring and sediment management a national priority.

The resources below provide access to data, tools, and programmes focused on erosion risk, sediment dynamics, and siltation management across South Africa and beyond.

South Africa Specific

DFFE National Biodiversity Assessment – Terrestrial Component — includes land degradation and erosion status information by ecosystem type

ARC (Agricultural Research Council) – Soil and Water research — conducts soil erosion research relevant to South African agricultural landscapes

Working for Water / Working for Land programmes — government programmes that address erosion through invasive alien plant removal and land rehabilitation

National Siltation Management Programme

RUSLE / USLE resources — the Universal Soil Loss Equation and its revised version are the most widely used tools for estimating soil erosion risk; FAO provides guidance and datasets

Global Rainfall Erosivity Database (GloREDa) — global R-factor data from the EU Joint Research Centre, useful for RUSLE applications

SoilGrids (ISRIC) — global soil property maps including erodibility data

South African National Land Cover datasets — vegetation cover is a key determinant of erosion risk and available from DFFE

Sediment & Siltation

HydroSedi.Net (The home of sediment management)

Global Sedimentation Database (ICOLD) — international data on reservoir sedimentation rates

SWAT model — widely used catchment model that simulates sediment yield and transport; already linked on the Hydrological Data page but directly relevant here too

Remote Sensing for Erosion

ESA Copernicus Land Service — provides land cover and soil erosion related products at continental scale

NASA SRTM / DEM data — digital elevation models essential for slope analysis and erosion modelling

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