Erosion control strategies? The most effective way of minimizing erosion is to guarantee a permanent surface cover on the soil surface, such as trees, pasture, or meadow. However, compared to original forest soils, soils in pasture fields and croplands have less capacity to hold up and are more susceptible to erosion. These soils also have less capacity to absorb water, which makes flooding (and its economic, social, and environmental impacts) more common. The increasingly high demand of a growing population for commodities such as coffee, soybean, palm oil or wheat is clearing land for agriculture. Unfortunately, clearing autochthonous trees and replacing them with new tree crops that don’t necessarily hold onto the soil increases the risks of soil erosion. With time, as topsoil (the most nutrient-rich part of the soil) is lost, putting agriculture under threat.
Every year, rivers deposit millions of tons of sediment into the oceans. Without the erosive forces of water, wind, and ice, rock debris would simply pile up where it forms and obscure from view nature’s weathered sculptures. Although erosion is a natural process, abusive land-use practices such as deforestation and overgrazing can expedite erosion and strip the land of soils needed for food to grow.
The broadest application of the term erosion embraces the general wearing down and molding of all landforms on Earth’s surface, including the weathering of rock in its original position, the transport of weathered material, and erosion caused by wind action and fluvial, marine, and glacial processes. This broad definition is more correctly called denudation, or degradation, and includes mass-movement processes. A narrow and somewhat limiting definition of erosion excludes the transport of eroded material by natural agencies, but the exclusion of the transport phenomenon makes the distinction between erosion and weathering very vague. Find extra information at erosion control guide.
Local climate change scenarios will contribute to water erosion processes, mostly by rainfall erosivity increase. Different forest management models provide varying levels of soil protection by trees, resulting in distinct soil loss potential. Results confirm the suitability of the proposed approach to address soil erosion concerns in forest management planning. This approach may help foresters assess management models and the corresponding silvicultural practices according to the water-related services they provide.
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.