The costs for Germany were estimated on the basis of the annual average costs of the loss of soil by erosion that had been calculated by a study of Görlach for 13 european countries from the year 2004.1
To avoid potential methodological problems by adding up costs from different categories, only private and social damage costs have been considered. The calculation for Germany was made on the basis of the german agricultural land as part of the total agricultural land in the 13 countries that had been analyzed. This amounted to 13,5 percent. Soil losses in south european countries are larger than in Germany; this could lead to n over-estimation of german costs. Due to the fact that only a part of existing damage costs of soil has been captured and that the component has only the quality of a planned item, this danger of over-estimation does not seem to be problematic.