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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. Soil erosion could also cause sinkholes.
While erosion is a natural process, human activities have increased by 10–40 times the rate at which soil erosion is occurring globally. [7] At agriculture sites in the Appalachian Mountains, intensive farming practices have caused erosion at up to 100 times the natural rate of erosion in the region. [8]
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.
Eroded hilltops due to tillage erosion. Tillage erosion is a form of soil erosion occurring in cultivated fields due to the movement of soil by tillage. [1] [2] 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 [3] [4] [5] A signature ...
Sheet erosion is the overland transport of sediment by runoff without a well defined channel. Soil surface roughness causes may cause runoff to become concentrated into narrower flow paths: as these incise, the small but well-defined channels which are formed are known as rills.
In the last three decades, erosion that follows wildfires has accelerated across California as climate change continues to intensify both fires and rainstorms, according to new research.
Soil erodibility is a lumped parameter that represents an integrated annual value of the soil profile reaction to the process of soil detachment and transport by raindrops and surface flow. [1] The most commonly used model for predicting soil loss from water erosion is the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) (also known as the K-factor ...
Dispersion is a process that occurs in soils that are particularly vulnerable to erosion by water. In soil layers where clays are saturated with sodium ions ("sodic soils"), soil can break down very easily into fine particles and wash away. This can lead to a variety of soil and water quality problems, including: