sustainability Article Analysis of Ownership Data from Consolidated Land Threatened by Water Erosion in the Vlára Basin, Slovakia Alexandra Pagá ˇ c Mokrá 1 , Jakub Pagá ˇ c 2 , Zlatica Muchová 1, * and František Petroviˇ c 3   Citation: Pagᡠc Mokrá, A.; Pagᡠc, J.; Muchová, Z.; Petroviˇ c, F. Analysis of Ownership Data from Consolidated Land Threatened by Water Erosion in the Vlára Basin, Slovakia. Sustainability 2021, 13, 51. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.3390/ su13010051 Received: 4 November 2020 Accepted: 20 December 2020 Published: 23 December 2020 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neu- tral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Copyright: © 2020 by the authors. Li- censee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/). 1 Department of Landscape Planning and Land Consolidation, Faculty of Horticulture and Landscape Engineering, Slovak University of Agriculture, Hospodárska 7, 949 76 Nitra, Slovakia; alexandra.mokra@gmail.com 2 AgroBioTech Research Centre SUA in Nitra, Slovak University of Agriculture, Trieda A. Hlinku 2, 949 76 Nitra, Slovakia; jakub.pagac@uniag.sk 3 Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Constantinus the Philosopher in Nitra, Trieda A. Hlinku 1, 949 01 Nitra, Slovakia; fpetrovic@ukf.sk * Correspondence: zlatica.muchova@uniag.sk Abstract: Water erosion is a phenomenon that significantly damages agricultural land. The current land fragmentation in Slovakia and the complete ambiguity of who owns it leads to a lack of respon- sibility to care for the land in its current condition, which could affect its sustainability in the future. The reason so much soil has eroded is obvious when looking at current land management, with large fields, a lack of windbreaks between them, and no barriers to prevent soil runoff. Land consolidation might be the solution. This paper seeks to evaluate redistributed land and, based on modeling by the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) method, to assess the degree of soil erosion risk. Owner- ship data provided information on how many owners and what amount of area to consider, while taking into account new conditions regarding water erosion. The results indicate that 2488 plots of 1607 owners which represent 12% of the model area are still endangered by water erosion, even after the completion of the land consolidation project. The results also presented a way of evaluating the territory and aims to trigger a discussion regarding an unambiguous definition of responsibility in the relationship between owner and user. Keywords: water erosion; erosion threat to the soil; land fragmentation; land consolidation 1. Introduction Soil erosion caused by water is one of the most widespread causes of soil degradation, and not just in Europe. Many authors [1,2] have written about the complete stripping of topsoil, what they consider to be a serious environmental, economic, and social problem. Only a few hundredths of a mm of new soil is created each year [3,4] and, in just a few years, all of the soil can be completely eroded away. Because of the very low rate of soil formation, annual losses greater than 1 t per ha can be considered irreversible within 50–100 years [5]. Erosion can be described as the mechanical action of moving water, wind, and other destructive forces removing the soil and transferring it elsewhere [6,7]. Soil erosion impacts all types of landscape. In most European countries, the mean erosion rate for agricultural land is greater than in forests [8]. From an agricultural perspective, soil erosion refers to the stripping of a field’s surface layer by the natural physical forces of water and wind, or by forces generated by agri- cultural activities [5,6]. When the topsoil layer is shallow, all of the natural agricultural land can be lost. But if it is deeper, the loss of topsoil is often not visible, yet nonetheless potentially quite harmful. The main cause of soil erosion is detrimental agricultural prac- tices [9] and ever-expanding development of agricultural land as urban areas grow [10]. Even climate change is accelerating the degradation of soil [11,12]. Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) [13] predicts the long-term average annual rate of erosion on a field slope based on rainfall pattern (rainfall erosivity factor “R”), soil type Sustainability 2021, 13, 51. https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su13010051 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability