Soil Erosion and Degradation

Soil is the fragile skin of the earth and fixes all life on earth. It is made up of myriad species and creates a vibrant complex ecosystem, one of the most precious resources of humanity. Due to increased demand for agricultural products, people have switched forests and grasslands to agricultural land and meadow. Many of these plants, such as coffee, cotton, palm oil, soybeans, wheat and the like, may actually increase soil erosion beyond the soil self-sustaining ability.

In the past 150 years, half of the earth's topsoil has disappeared. In addition to erosion, soil quality is also affected by other aspects of agriculture. These effects include compression, loss of soil structure, nutrient degradation, soil salinity and so on. These are very real and sometimes serious problems

The effect of soil erosion is beyond the loss of fertile land. It causes contamination of rivers and rivers and an increase in sediments, blocking these canals and causing a decrease in fish and other species. Also, in degraded lands it is often impossible to save water, which can exacerbate floods. Sustainable land use reduces the impact of agriculture and livestock, prevents soil degradation and erosion, and prevents precious loss of land to desertification.

Soil health is the biggest concern for farmers and the world community who rely on well-managed agriculture, starting with the dirt on our feet. Maintaining healthy soil faces many challenges, but there are also dedicated solutions and groups, including WWF, who are working on innovating and maintaining fragile skin of biodiversity sources.

Soil erosion and degradation: Climate is an important factor as soil erosion is a movement and movement of soils due to various factors, especially water, wind and mass movement. The increase in soil erosion is closely related to the elimination of natural vegetation, making agriculture available to the land and using agricultural methods not suitable for agriculture. This combined with the expected increase in climate change and extreme weather phenomena creates ideal conditions for soil erosion. The main climatic factors that affect soil erosion are rainfall (frequency, frequency, duration and strength) and wind (strong wind direction, strength and frequency), and soil drying. Land use, soil type, terrain are other important factors.

Soil erosion is a widespread degradation process naturally occurring on slopes in the case of water erosion, or in highly windy areas with poor vegetation. It is not itself a degenerative process, it can only "degrade" if it can detect measurable effects of artificial corrosion. Since the rate of naturally occurring erosion varies depending on the situation in the area, it is impossible to determine universally valid values ​​for defining soil erosion processes for land degradation assessment. However, in the OECD countries, the soil erosion threshold of 11 tons / ha / year is proposed as a value that allows soil erosion to be regarded as an artificial degradation process beyond that threshold (Figure 1.1) .