Estimating the Impact of Agricultural Land Use – Land Cover Change on Riverbank Stability and Critical Inland Navigation Areas of the Danube River

Intensive agriculture, deforestation, and frequent land-use changes contribute to in-creased soil erosion and sediment transport from both arable and non-arable lands into minor river channels. These factors directly and indirectly influence riverbank erosion and, in turn, sediment transport in rivers. Evidence on anthropogenic land-use/land-cover (LULC) change impact remains limited in both quantitative and spatial terms within the Danube River Basin. The results based on the combination of LU-LC products derived from the Copernicus satellite (year 2000 vs. year 2018) and validated in the field by UAV flights (year 2025) indicate that land conversion from ri-parian vegetation to cultivated or uncultivated lands reduces the root cohesion and soil–bank structural stability, thus increasing sediment sediment delivery to the river channel through overland flow, and favors bank failure where agriculture is in the immediate vicinity of the banks. The workflow proposed in this study offers a transferable and adaptable solution for areas with similar characteristics for a multitemporal approach regarding the influence of especially agricultural lands on sediment transport and riverbank erosion.