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Soil erosion is the denudation or wearing away of the upper layer of soil. ... Human Impact has major effects on erosion processes—first by denuding the land of ...
Soil erosion is the main factor for soil degradation and is due to several mechanisms: water erosion, wind erosion, chemical degradation and physical degradation. Erosion can be influenced by human activity. For example, roads which increase impermeable surfaces lead to streaming and ground loss.
If the erosion rate exceeds soil formation, erosion destroys the soil. [76] Lower rates of erosion can prevent the formation of soil features that take time to develop. Inceptisols develop on eroded landscapes that, if stable, would have supported the formation of more developed Alfisols. [77] While erosion of soils is a natural process, human ...
Soil erosion in a wheat field near Pullman, US. High population density is not always related to land degradation. Rather, it is the practices of the human population that can cause a landscape to become degraded. Severe land degradation affects a significant portion of the Earth's arable lands, decreasing the wealth and economic development of ...
For 2010, annual average soil loss by sheet, rill and wind erosion on non-federal US land was estimated to be 10.7 t/ha on cropland and 1.9 t/ha on pasture land; the average soil erosion rate on US cropland had been reduced by about 34% since 1982. [72]
Environmental impact of mining can occur at local, regional, and global scales through direct and indirect mining practices. Mining can cause erosion, sinkholes, loss of biodiversity, or the contamination of soil, groundwater, and surface water by chemicals emitted from mining processes.
Unprotected, dry soil surfaces blow away with the wind or are washed away by flash floods, leaving infertile lower soil layers that bake in the sun and become an unproductive hardpan. This spread of arid areas is caused by a variety of factors, such as overexploitation of soil as a result of human activity and the effects of climate change. [3] [4]
[58] [59] There is growing evidence that tillage erosion is a major soil erosion process in agricultural lands, surpassing water and wind erosion in many fields all around the world, especially on sloping and hilly lands [60] [61] [62] A signature spatial pattern of soil erosion shown in many water erosion handbooks and pamphlets, the eroded ...