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Water and wind erosion are the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for about 84% of the global extent of degraded land, making excessive erosion one of the most significant environmental problems worldwide. [9]: 2 [10]: 1 [11]
Coastal erosion is the loss or displacement of land, or the long-term removal of sediment and rocks along the coastline due to the action of waves, currents, tides, wind-driven water, waterborne ice, or other impacts of storms.
Hydraulic toe erosion occurs when flow is in the direction of a bank at the bend of the river and the highest velocity is at the outer edge and in the center depth of the water. [5] Centrifugal forces raise the water elevation so that it is highest on the outside bend, and as gravity pulls the water downward, a rolling, helical spiral happens ...
Surface runoff can cause erosion of the Earth's surface; eroded material may be deposited a considerable distance away. There are four main types of soil erosion by water: splash erosion, sheet erosion, rill erosion and gully erosion. Splash erosion is the result of mechanical collision of raindrops with the soil surface: soil particles which ...
There are two primary mechanisms of stream bank erosion: fluvial erosion and mass failure. Fluvial erosion is the direct removal of soil particles by flowing water. The rate of fluvial erosion is determined both by the force of the flowing water (e.g. faster flow equals more force) and the resistance of the bank material to erosion (e.g. clay is generally more resistant to erosion than sand).
Gravity causes rift erosion on a downward slope, with steeper slopes generating greater water flow. Sandier terrains are more commonly affected by rills most prevalent during the rainier months. Gullies develop when a rill is neglected for an extended time, thickening and expanding as soil erosion persists.
Hydraulic action, most generally, is the ability of moving water (flowing or waves) to dislodge and transport rock particles.This includes a number of specific erosional processes, including abrasion, at facilitated erosion, such as static erosion where water leaches salts and floats off organic material from unconsolidated sediments, and from chemical erosion more often called chemical ...
Lake bed downcutting is the erosion of cohesive material such as clay or glacial till from a shoreline by wave action. When the sand cover is stripped away and the cohesive layer is exposed, cohesive material is lost to the water column. Unlike sand, cohesive material cannot be replenished by natural events such as bluff erosion. This can ...