Soil Erosion, Biggest Global Environmental Problem

According to sources at the 12 th International Conference on Soil Conservation (ISCO) held in Beijing on Monday, soil erosion is still the world's largest environmental problem, threatening both developed and developing countries.

"When soil abandons fertility, humans will lose the basic biological resources we depend on," said Jiao Juren, director of the Ministry of Water Resources Ministry of Soil and Water Conservation.

Austrian Dr. Josef Rosner said that soil erosion is a direct cause of environmental degradation and poverty in many parts of the world, both in developed and developing countries.

According to the conference data, 65% of the earth's soil shows degradation such as erosion, desertification, salification and so on.

In Europe, 12% of the soil may be eroded by water and 4% may be eroded by wind. Soil erosion is also found in 95 million hectares of land in North America and 500 million hectares of land in Africa.

Economic losses due to soil erosion and salification in South Asia were $ 4 billion, $ 8 billion and $ 5 billion respectively.

China faces one of the most serious soil erosion problems in the world. According to the latest remote sensing survey, the soil erosion area of ​​the country is about 56 million square kilometers, accounting for 37% of the total area of ​​China.

ISCO member Mark Nearing said that soil erosion releases carbon ions into the atmosphere, soil erosion affects not only economic development but also climate change, carbon dioxide is the main cause of global warming Said.

Soil erosion is a natural process, but human activity increases the rate of global erosion by 10 to 40 times. Excessive (or accelerated) erosion can cause "onsite" and "offsite" problems. On-site impacts include ecological breakdown (natural landscape) due to agricultural productivity decline and loss of nutrient-rich upper soil. In some cases, the final result is desertification. Impacts outside the site include sedimentation of waterways and eutrophication of water bodies, as well as damage to deposits related to roads and houses. Water erosion and wind erosion are the two main causes of land degradation, together they account for about 84% of the world's degraded lands, making excessive erosion one of the most important environmental problems.

Soil erosion and environmental degradation are major serious public health and environmental problems that affect and confront people and society. According to statistics, humans get 99.7% of food from land, the rest are obtaining aquatic life such as ocean and other aquatic ecosystems. However, more than 10 million hectares of agricultural land are lost each year by soil erosion, which in turn reduces the amount of farmland available for human food production. According to the World Health Organization, the loss of this agricultural land is a serious problem, and more than 6 billion people worldwide suffer from malnutrition (Showers, 2005). Land losses are typically 10 to 40 times faster than soil renewal, compromising future human food safety and environmental quality. Soil erosion is one of the major environmental degradation problems faced by developing countries.

Soil conservation is a process to prevent soil erosion and loss of fertility. Erosion is problematic as the loss of topsoil is equivalent to the loss of nutrients necessary for plant survival. Loss of topsoil can also cause further negative environmental impacts. Topsoil in the agricultural zone often contains fertilizers and pesticides, eventually entering the water system and risking the balance of fragile ecosystems. The purpose of soil conservation is to maintain soil fertility and to use various techniques to prevent harmful erosion.