All about erosion, a comprehensive guide? Soil erosion is a complex process that depends on soil properties, ground slope, vegetation, and rainfall amount and intensity. According to Montgomery, modifications in land use are one of the most impactful ways of accelerating soil erosion. These changes then have a cascade effect as the loss of fertile topsoil cover sends millions of tons of sediments into lakes and reservoirs, changing ecosystems and impacting agricultural production and water quality. This has been the case with the Bo River in Vietnam. Despite these types of soil erosion, as we have briefly mentioned above, if it wasn’t for human activities, today’s soils would be less susceptible to erosion and more resilient. What are the human causes behind soil erosion then?

Water is nature’s most versatile tool. For example, take rain on a frigid day. The water pools in cracks and crevices. Then, at night, the temperature drops and the water expands as it turns to ice, splitting the rock like a sledgehammer to a wedge. The next day, under the beating sun, the ice melts and trickles the cracked fragments away. Repeated swings in temperature can also weaken and eventually fragment rock, which expands when hot and shrinks when cold. Such pulsing slowly turns stones in the arid desert to sand. Likewise, constant cycles from wet to dry will crumble clay.

Erosion, therefore, includes the transportation of eroded or weathered material from the point of degradation (such as the side of a mountain or other landform) but not the deposition of material at a new site. The complementary actions of erosion and deposition or sedimentation operate through the geomorphic processes of wind, moving water, and ice to alter existing landforms and create new landforms. Discover additional info at what is erosion website.

Soil erosion, that is, the process that transforms soil into sediments, is one of the major and most widely spread forms of land degradation (Lal 2014; Weil and Brady 2017). It encompasses the destruction of the physical structure that supports the development of plant roots. Moreover, surface soil removal may result in substantial nutrient and water losses, as well as in the decrease of productivity and the increase of pollution of surface waterways. Soil erosion impacts thus the sustainability of ecosystems and the provision of ecosystem services. Soil conservation efforts address concerns with these impacts and meet the increasing needs for food and raw materials (Hurni et al. 2008).

Terracing is a method of carving multiple, flat leveled areas into hills. Steps are formed by the terraces which are surrounded by a mud wall to prevent runoff and hold the soil nutrients in the beds. More commonly found in lesser developed nations due to the difficulty of using mechanized farming equipment in the terraces. Very popular in Asia for planting rice. A more enhanced version of Contour Plowing, maximum water retention is achieved by taking into account all the watershed properties when making the contour lines. The Keyline refers to topographic features linked to water flow. This allows the water to run off to run directly into an existing water channel, and prevent soil erosion caused by the water.