Soil Erosion

Permits They are characterized by their fertility and wealth and are protected by the arboriculture. The Oued Ikkour that is a tributary of the Oum Er Rbia River crosses a distance of 15 km before reaching the Zaouit Cheikh City. It is characterized by a steep slope of ≈10° on average, an elongated shape and an index of compactness of 1.25. The Ikkour watershed presents rugged terrain with the highest elevation of 2209 m. It is marked by a regression of forest cover due to agricultural extension, intensive pasture, and deforestation.

As the suspended particles reach the ocean, the water becomes cloudy, causing regional declines in coral reefs, and affecting coastal fisheries. The loss of coral reefs worldwide, often labeled the rainforests of the sea, is especially distressing to scientists because of their tremendous diversity and the important services they provide. Coastal fisheries are affected not just by the loss of coral reefs and their communities, but by the damage inflicted on mangrove forests by heavy siltation. In addition to on-site soil loss, erosion results in off-site sediment movement that can cause problems downstream. Sediment can deposit and clog drainage ways, increase potential for flooding, decrease reservoir capacity, and carry nutrients and pesticides that degrade water quality. Environmental Protection Agency of impaired water bodies indicate that 40% of the stream miles and 45% of the lake and reservoir areas are impaired because of sediment.

Mitigation Measure Or Erosion Management

Wind erosion is particularly a problem on sandy and organic soils, which are subject to intermittent low-moisture contents and periodic winds. Currently wind erosion is mainly a feature of arid and semiarid conditions. Those areas where climate change is predicted to lead to more droughty soils under increasing temperatures will become increasingly vulnerable to wind erosion.

Pennsylvanians have a right to clean water Opinion - pennlive.com

Pennsylvanians have a right to clean water Opinion.

Posted: Sun, 09 Jan 2022 13:27:00 GMT [source]

This doesn’t include the cost of the growing hypoxia zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Besides damaging the fisheries industry, deforestation-induced erosion can undermine roads and highways that cross through the forest. To address this, we need smart changes to the food system—not false solutions. Diversify crop rotations to help build soil fertility and disrupt pest cycles. Help protect farmers, workers, and communities from Big Agriculture.

Soil Erosion And Sedimentation

During the early decades of the 20th century, farmers dramatically expanded unsustainable grazing and farming throughout the Great Plains. In particular, farmers encouraged by rising wheat prices in the 1910s and 1920s plowed up millions of acres of deep-rooted native grasses and adopted farming methods that made the soil a sitting duck for erosion. Later, when the Great Depression struck and wheat prices fell, desperate farmers plowed even more grassland. Soil is a living community—an enormously complex ecosystem in which the intersecting activities of plants, animals, and microorganisms like fungi and bacteria combine to create a rich environment for food production.

More Erosion Is Happening Globally. Here's What It Means For Farms. - Science Friday

More Erosion Is Happening Globally. Here's What It Means For Farms..

Posted: Fri, 12 Nov 2021 08:00:00 GMT [source]

In accordance with these agents, erosion is sometimes divided into water erosion, glacial erosion, snow erosion, wind erosion, zoogenic erosion and anthropogenic erosion such as tillage erosion. Soil erosion may be a slow process that continues relatively unnoticed, or it may occur at an alarming rate causing a serious loss of topsoil. The loss of soil from farmland may be reflected in reduced crop production potential, lower surface water quality and damaged drainage networks. Severe soil erosion challenges exist in China as a result of long-term human related activities and its erosion-prone land forms and climate. Anthropogenic forces that alter the physical landscape cause substantial soil erosion which have adverse impact on surface water bodies and therefore necessitating sediment control as important aspects of catchment management planning. In this review we focused principally on the erosion factors and how to prevent and/or mitigate them.

The Key Effects Of Erosion For Farming

The review revealed that erosion causes both on-site and off-site effects on land and also on water bodies thereby affecting its quality. Control in managed forests is undertaken, and best achieved, for two main reasons. The first relates to soil protection for the sustainable productivity of the forest resource. The second relates to the protection of valuable water resources located in forested catchments. This article discusses soil erosion control in managed forests from this twofold perspective.
  • Soil erosion is a complex process that depends on soil properties, ground slope, vegetation, and rainfall amount and intensity .
  • But with worldwide efforts to increase production of crops for both food and energy production, efforts to limit soil erosion for the sake of maintaining productive cropland remain of critical importance.
  • As Oklahoma State University explains, this type of erosion occurs when a raindrop hits the soil and dislodges particles of soil, splashing them up and away.
  • Good aeration requires at least 20% of the pore space (about 10% of the volume of the whole soil) to be air filled.
The vegetative cover acts to reduce the velocity of the raindrops that strike the foliage and stems before hitting the ground, reducing their kinetic energy. However it is the forest floor, more than the canopy, that prevents surface erosion. Because forest canopies are usually higher than this, rain drops can often regain terminal velocity even after striking the canopy. However, the intact forest floor, with its layers of leaf litter and organic matter, is still able to absorb the impact of the rainfall. The most effective way to control erosion is to maintain a permanent surface cover on the soil surface, such as pasture or meadow. A windbreak planted next to an agricultural field, acting as a shield against strong winds. This reduces the effects of wind erosion, and provides many other benefits. Tilled farmland such as this is very susceptible to erosion from rainfall, due to the destruction of vegetative cover and the loosening of the soil during plowing. Dobbingstone Burn, Scotland—This photo illustrates two different types of erosion affecting the same place. Valley erosion is occurring due to the flow of the stream, and the boulders and stones that are lying on the edges are glacial till that was left behind as ice age glaciers flowed over the terrain. A major factor for preventing soil erosion is educating more and more people who work with the land on why it is a concern, and what they can do to help reduce it. When the soil under the topsoil becomes compacted and stiff, it reduces the ability for water to infiltrate these deeper levels, keeping runoff at greater levels, which increases the risk of more serious erosion. A major problem with soil erosion is that there is no guideline as to how quickly or slowly it will occur. And, while frozen soil is highly resistant to erosion, rapidly thawing soil can lead to increased erosion. The watershed of Ikkour in the Middle Atlas is known to have significant soil erosion problems. This study has been carried out to estimate soil erosion in the Ikkour watershed using USLE and spectral index approaches to the GIS environment. Aafaf El Jazouli and Ahmed Barakat contributed to study design, data collection and interpretation, manuscript preparation, and literature search. Deforested swatches in Brazil show up as gray amid the bright red tropical rainforest. Grazing animals can cause erosion if they are allowed to overgraze and remove too much or all of the vegetation in a pasture. Also, the ionic strength of the cations in the soil can affect aggregate stability.
It is important to note that this accelerated soil loss is equivalent to less than 1 mm (0.04 inch) of soil depth, making erosion damage very difficult to observe over short time spans. Soil erosion results in soil being detached, carried away, and eventually deposited elsewhere. It is a natural process, and rivers and creeks naturally hold soil, deposit it in some places and pick it up in other places. In the Huron River Watershed, soil erosion is a problem when it is accelerated because of high water flow and human disturbance (i.e. farming, construction) of the land surrounding our streams.

What is soil erosion in short answer 8?

It is a process in which the top fertile layer of soil is lost. Due to soil erosion, the soil becomes less fertile. The top layer of soil is very light which is easily carried away by wind and water. The removal of topsoil by the natural forces is known as soil erosion.

Gully erosion can refer to soil being washed away through human-made drainage lines or describe the process of soil traveling through grooves created by hard rains. Farmers will typically fill these grooves back in with fresh soil as a temporary solution. As seen across the Midwest in 2019, gully erosion can hinder the ability to plow fields and grow crops. Farming is the world’s largest industry, employing a billion people who produce more than $1 trillion of food annually. Today, deforestation of large areas in the tropics to make the land ready for agricultural production results in the release of carbon stored in the soil, contributing to climate change.

What is soil erosion Brainly Class 10?

Answer: Soil erosion is defined as the wearing away of topsoil. Topsoil is the top layer of soil and is the most fertile because it contains the most organic, nutrient-rich materials. One of the main causes of soil erosion is water erosion, which is the loss of topsoil due to water.

The spatial erosion maps generated with SWAT and GIS can serve as effective inputs in deriving strategies for land-use planning and management in the environmentally sensitive mountainous areas. Layers of soil, from the living organic matter on top to the bedrock on the bottom.On much of the world’s most productive agricultural land, almost half of the rich topsoil has disappeared in the last 150 years. Human activities, such as poor farming practices like overgrazing and improper tilling contribute to soil erosion. Climate change also exacerbates soil erosion due to more intense rainfalls and droughts. Each year, about 75 billion tons of soil is eroded from the land—a rate that is about 13–40 times as fast as the natural rate of erosion. Modeled temporal variations in soil erodibility replicate decomposing residue cover, soil consolidation for reduced roughness, and crop factors. Temporally dynamic crop canopy height and cover that varies due to plant growth also directly modifies the soil-water balance and related rain infiltration. The growing crop further complicates erosion estimates by interactions with temporal varying seasonal rain and the factors for adjusted soil erodibility. The resulting mechanistic soil erosion calculations permit useful comparisons of conservation practices by incorporating climatic details and interacting seasonal crop growth. In the mid-20th century, recognition that conventional agriculture dramatically accelerated soil erosion led to experimentation with conservation tillage and no-till agriculture . Over the past several decades, no-till agriculture has been increasingly adopted as a cost-effective alternative to conventional tillage practices.

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