EroMapper – a QField plugin for soil erosion mapping

Soil erosion is one of the main threats to agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability worldwide. Detailed and consistent field data on erosion features are essential for a better understanding of erosion processes, identifying driving factors and supporting the development and evaluation of suitable soil erosion mitigation strategies and soil erosion prediction tools. Existing digital mapping solutions are often limited in terms of standardisation, flexibility and ease of use. The Qfield plugin EroMapper is a new open-source tool designed to support standardised and efficient field mapping of soil erosion features by water erosion. The plugin provides a modular, tool-based workflow for recording linear, sheet and combined erosion features, as well as soil material depositions, overland water flow and land management practices. The observations are easy to map and stored in a predefined GeoPackage structure, ensuring consistency between field data collection and subsequent analyses. An accompanying Python-based post-processing script systematically derives key parameters, such as affected area, erosion or deposition volume, mass and average depth of linear erosion features. Mapped features can be linked to geospatial parcel geometries for aggregation. The workflow enables reproducible data processing and assigns unique identifiers to all mapped features. Overall, the plugin workflow provides a robust and flexible solution for long-term field monitoring of soil erosion by water, the documentation of erosion events and supports further analysis and modelling applications.