# Spatial-Temporal Variability of Future Rainfall Erosivity and Its Impact on Soil Loss Risk in Kenya
## 4 Discussion  
The current study emphasized the merits of the well-tested RUSLE model for monitoring soil erosion rates, which include fast analyses of the impacts of future climate variability on soil erosion (climatic factor), easy adaptability in many GIS platforms (which allows simple computation, even for nationwide erosion risk assessments) and applicability of easily accessible data (both at global and local scales) [82]. The baseline results of the present study were in agreement with other similar works performed within Kenya and around the EA region. The baseline mean annual soil erosion rate was within the range of erosion rates for the EA region, as assessed by references [14; 44; 83], as well as for the African continent [84]. The baseline soil erosion rate results concurred with the results reported previously in the multiple regional studies [14; 16; 44; 46; 49]. The current soil loss rate estimation also corroborated the range of mean erosion rate values for Kenya (5.67 t h\({}^{-1}\) yr\({}^{-1}\)) reported in the Global Soil Erosion Modelling (GloSEM) [1] However, our baseline mean rainfall erosivity was lower than the value derived from the Global Rainfall Erosivity Dataset (Glo-REDa) [85] for Kenya (2588.1 MJ mm ha\({}^{-1}\) h\({}^{-1}\) yr\({}^{-1}\)). [PERSON] et al. [44] also noted such a discrepancy in the RUSLE model ensemble for Kenya and Uganda. Such visible differences were also noted after making comparisons between the high-resolution rainfall erosivity (GloREDa) and other similar studies. For instance, reference [41] computed a mean rainfall erosivity (8470 MJ mm ha\({}^{-1}\) h\({}^{-1}\) yr\({}^{-1}\)) that was higher than the GloREDa value for Brazil (7560.8 MJ mm ha\({}^{-1}\) h\({}^{-1}\) yr\({}^{-1}\)). Similarly, [PERSON] et al. [52] observed an erosivity of 1447.7 MJ mm ha\({}^{-1}\) h\({}^{-1}\) yr\({}^{-1}\) against a GloREDa value of 772.7 MJ mm ha\({}^{-1}\) h\({}^{-1}\) yr\({}^{-1}\) over Tajikistan. Table 17 presents a comparison of rainfall erosivity results of this study with past literature \(R\) factor values based on multi-years \(El_{30}\) calculations. The baseline results \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c} \hline  & & **LVR** & **CER** & **CR** & **NER** & **RVR** \\ \hline \multirow{8}{*}{RCP-2.6 (2080s)} & CCCMA\_CANESM2 & 20.39 & 7.65 & 2.35 & 0.85 & 11.47 \\  & Change (\%) & 28.89 & 58.71 & 11.37 & 21.43 & 62.70 \\  & CESM1-CAM5 & 17.32 & 6.01 & 2.51 & 0.92 & 8.12 \\  & Change (\%) & 9.48 & 24.69 & 18.96 & 31.43 & 15.18 \\  & CSIRO\_MK3.6.0 & 16.03 & 5.60 & 2.10 & 0.74 & 7.41 \\  & Change (\%) & 1.33 & 16.18 & \(-\)0.47 & 5.71 & 5.11 \\  & MIROC-5 & 14.63 & 4.73 & 1.87 & 0.66 & 5.98 \\  & Change (\%) & \(-\)7.52 & \(-\)1.87 & \(-\)11.37 & \(-\)5.71 & \(-\)15.18 \\ \hline \multirow{8}{*}{RCP-8.5 (2030s)} & CCCMA\_CANESM2 & 19.28 & 7.40 & 2.35 & 0.83 & 10.91 \\  & Change (\%) & 21.87 & 53.53 & 11.37 & 18.57 & 54.75 \\  & CESM1-CAM5 & 16.25 & 6.14 & 2.60 & 0.97 & 7.82 \\  & Change (\%) & 2.72 & 27.39 & 23.22 & 38.57 & 10.92 \\  & CSIRO\_MK3.6.0 & 16.87 & 5.71 & 2.10 & 0.71 & 7.74 \\  & Change (\%) & 6.64 & 15.59 & \(-\)0.47 & 1.43 & 9.79 \\  & MIROC-5 & 16.63 & 4.90 & 2.10 & 0.69 & 6.33 \\  & Change (\%) & 5.12 & 1.66 & \(-\)0.47 & \(-\)1.43 & \(-\)10.21 \\ \hline \multirow{8}{*}{RCP-8.5 (2080s)} & CCCMA\_CANESM2 & 21.96 & 9.81 & 2.74 & 1.04 & 14.66 \\  & Change (\%) & 38.81 & 103.53 & 29.86 & 48.57 & 107.94 \\ \cline{1-1}  & CESM1-CAM5 & 18.80 & 6.78 & 2.82 & 1.08 & 9.45 \\ \cline{1-1}  & Change (\%) & 18.84 & 40.66 & 33.65 & 54.29 & 34.04 \\ \cline{1-1}  & CSIRO\_MK3.6.0 & 18.77 & 6.60 & 2.28 & 0.87 & 9.16 \\ \cline{1-1}  & Change (\%) & 18.65 & 36.93 & 8.06 & 24.29 & 29.93 \\ \cline{1-1}  & MIROC-5 & 17.64 & 5.06 & 2.25 & 0.81 & 6.74 \\ \cline{1-1}  & Change (\%) & 11.20 & 4.98 & 6.634 & 15.71 & \(-\)4.40 \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 16: Cont. of the present study were also compared to previous soil erosion plot studies in Kenya for validation purposes (Table 18).