# Spatial-Temporal Variability of Future Rainfall Erosivity and Its Impact on Soil Loss Risk in Kenya
## 5 Conclusions  
Soil conservation is an integral environmental goal in Kenya as it embarks on its ambitious Kenya Vision 2030 of attaining food security and increasing agricultural production. Kenya also strives to align itself with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by enhancing soil protection in order to attain land degradation neutrality by 2030. Recent IPCC reports projected increases in the frequency and/or the intensity of heavy precipitation and pluvial flooding over EA. This increases the risk of soil loss by water in the next century. The present study examined the magnitude of current soil erosion rates (baseline climate) for Kenya, as well as the potential impacts of climate change on rainfall erosivity using multiple GCMs (CCMA_CANESM2, CESM1-CAM5, CSIRO_MK3.6.0 & MIROC-5) under two greenhouse emissions (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5) for the 2030s and 2080s periods. The baseline soil loss rate was estimated at 4.76 t h\({}^{-1}\) yr\({}^{-1}\), with agricultural land being the most susceptible to erosion. There was a steady increase in mean soil erosion rates across most of the model ensembles from the 2030s to 2080s, with only four of all the 16 future scenarios recording a decline in erosion rates. All of the GCMs showed a positive change in average annual rainfall erosivity under all scenarios, except for MIROC-5-RCP2.6 in both the 2030s and 2080s time slices. The cumulative average of rainfall erosivity and soil erosion rates for all of the GCMs in the 2030s (both RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 combined) showed an increase of 39.9% and 29%, respectively, compared with the baseline climate. Similarly, the aggregate average of rainfall erosivity and the soil loss rate for all the GCMs projected increases of 61.1% and 59.87% respectively, in the 2080s. The highest positive change (217.23%) of the soil loss rate over Kenya belonged to CCCMA_CANESM2 RCP 8.5 in the 2080s, while the minimum (\(-14.29\%\)) was projected under the MIROC-5 RCP 2.6 in the 2030s period. Future climatic projections indicate that major expected increases in rainfall erosivity and soil loss rates are concentrated in the CER and RVR, which represent the main crop production regions of Kenya. In the Rift Valley Region, the relative variation of the mean soil loss rate rose up to 107.94% (CCCMA_CANESM2 RCP 8.5 (2080s). Thisstudy provides a good reference to policy makers to enable them devise adaptive soil erosion conservation measures.  
Conceptualization, G.W. and L.Y.; methodology, G.W., Y.H., V.O; investigation and validation, V.O. and B.A.; writing--original draft preparation, G.W., Y.H., F.M.; writing--review and editing, G.W. and F.M.; visualization, G.W. and Y.H.; supervision, L.Y. and Y.N.; project administration, Y.N.; funding acquisition, Y.N. and Z.Z. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research was funded by the National Key Research and Development Project of China, through grant agreement No 2020 YFC1521900 and 2020 YFC1521901. This work has also been supported by the National Key Research and Development Program (No. 2014A8007007020) and China Scholarship Council 2014 GXYB33, through the Sino-Africa Joint Research Centre.  
Not applicable.  
Data Availability StatementData are available in a publicly accessible repository that that does not issue DOIs.  
The authors would like to express their heartfelt gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights to improve the quality of this study.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.