Help protect Scotland’s precious soil resource

Help us protect Scotland’s soils and learn more about soil erosion by telling us where you see it, what you think caused it, and where the eroded soil is now.

Soil Erosion – what is it & where is it happening?

Soil erosion occurs when soil particles are broken off from the soil surface and are moved across the land and is usually caused by water flowing over the land or by the wind. Soil erosion occurs across the country, in both cultivated and uncultivated land, in the uplands and the lowlands.

Why should we care?

The most obvious effect of soil erosion is the loss of soil. You may have seen soil washed out of fields and onto roads. This is not just bad for farming; the eroded soil can be washed into rivers and burns where it can pollute the water as well as smother the river beds and damage breeding grounds for fish. Soil eroded from the uplands can result in peat hags – any hill walker will know that these are difficult to walk across! Erosion of peat soils can again cause water pollution and can also damage our climate by releasing carbon dioxide into the air.

You can help!

You can help us understand and monitor soil erosion by sending us your records using this website whenever you see evidence of soil erosion. Collecting this information is the first critical step to being able to tackle the problem.

Add record

Using this website, or the app, you can submit your records of soil erosion as geo-referenced photographs together with the option of simple assessments of the erosion.

You can view records submitted by other people to see other instances of erosion. Please note that new records are approved before being made available to view.

Soil Erosion Scotland is also an app for Apple and Android mobile devices. Click here to go to the Apple app store and here for the Android version in the Google Play store.

Any personal details submitted using these pages will be kept strictly private and are used solely to validate the information submitted. No information submitted as name, email address or affiliated institution will be made accessible on this site or shared with any party without your explicit permission.

There is no requirement to register to submit records. However, as we develop the system there may be opportunities to become involved in specific projects for which you will need to register to gain specialist access. We will share further information when this arises.

This project is funded by the Scottish Government RESAS Strategic Research Programme 2016-21.