Soil erosion and its preventions

Soil weathering by water, wind and tillage influences both agriculture and the physical environment. Soil decline, and its associated impacts, is one of the most influential (yet probably the least well-known) of today’s environmental obstacles. It is mostly due to poor land-use systems, which include deforestation, overgrazing, unmanaged development ventures and roads or trail buildings.

Soil is a heterogeneous mixture of living and non-living substances. It provides safety and nutrition to plants. Natural substitutes like water and wind, it tends to separate the topsoil and cause erosion. Rain falling upon the defenceless topsoil wipes it down into the streams. Due to the deficiency of plant covering, eroded soil cannot hold water. Water hastens into the rivers and overflows as a flood.

Dust storm also causes soil erosion. The shreds of topsoil accumulate in such amounts that they form clouds of dust. Human beings also create soil erosion. The growing human occupancy and enlargement of urban spaces head to the evacuation of vegetation. Once vegetation gets disordered, the soil gets imperilled to wind and water. Improper tillage is a different problem of soil erosion. Farmers often loosen the topsoil for uprooting weeds and providing seedbeds. They also give agricultural fields resting dormant for a long time. These methods present the topsoil to the wind and cause erosion.

Soil erosion is always a result of the humankind activities rash actions, such as overgrazing or inappropriate cultivation methods. These make the land unprotected and defenceless. Accelerated soil erosion by water or wind may alter both agricultural fields and the tangible conditions and is one of the usual comprehensive of today’s environmental predicaments. Other varieties of soil degradation include salinization, nutrient damage, and compaction.

Prevention of soil erosion - Plants stock shielding protection on the land and prevent soil erosion for the purposes:

• Plants slow down water as it passes over the land (runoff) and this allows much of the rain to absorb into the soil;
• Plant roots hold the soil in space and prevent it from being washed away;
• Plants break the result of a raindrop before and it hits the soil thus, degrading its capacity to erode.
• Plants in wetlands and on the banks of rivers are of critical attention as they slow down the stream of the water and their roots unite the soil, thus preventing erosion.

We can moderate soil erosion by fostering the following additional methods:

1. Concentrated cropping and use of conventional drainage channels.

2. Terracing on the sloping fields. It hinders the momentum of the running water.

3. Transplanting trees and sowing grasses.

4. Widespread afforestation applications to be carried out.

By Kanika Vij