A recent assessment carried out by the JRC estimates that water erodes 970 million tonnes of soil every year in the EU. This would mean a one metre-depth loss of soil from an area corresponding to the size of the city of Berlin, or a one centimetre loss from an area twice the size of Belgium. The fact that it takes 100 years to form 1 cm of new soil under natural temperate grasslands gives an idea of the magnitude of the problem of soil loss in the EU.

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