Erosion control strategies

Erosion control methods? Soil is a very important resource that allows the production of food, fiber, or forages. Despite it being a renewable resource, it renews slowly – generating three centimeters of topsoil takes 1,000 years. Therefore, protecting it is very important to bet on long-term, sustainable agricultural practices since one of the main issues associated with soil erosion is that it comes along a decrease in soil productivity. These productivity losses reduce the quantity and quality of the food we eat. A study based on the results of 40 soil associations reported that the effects of soil erosion on soil productivity were mostly the result of subsoil properties such as soil water availability, root growth or plow layer fertility – which impact yield results. In the end, with an unfavorable subsoil, erosion is easier and yields and productivity are more greatly affected.

Weathering and erosion slowly chisel, polish, and buff Earth’s rock into ever evolving works of art—and then wash the remains into the sea. The processes are definitively independent, but not exclusive. Weathering is the mechanical and chemical hammer that breaks down and sculpts the rocks. Erosion transports the fragments away. Working together they create and reveal marvels of nature from tumbling boulders high in the mountains to sandstone arches in the parched desert to polished cliffs braced against violent seas.

Erosion will often occur after rock has been disintegrated or altered through weathering. Weathered rock material will be removed from its original site and transported away by a natural agent. With both processes often operating simultaneously, the best way to distinguish erosion from weathering is by observing the transportation of material. Moving water is the most important natural erosional agent. The wastage of the seacoast, or coastal erosion, is brought about mainly by the action of sea waves but also, in part, by the disintegration or degradation of sea cliffs by atmospheric agents such as rain, frost, and tidal scour. Find additional information on erosion control website.

The cover-management factor (C-factor) within the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) is used as an indicator of soil protection by different land-uses and management options (Renard et al. 1991). Yet, few studies have addressed its potential as a dynamic tool for erosion control (Panagos et al. 2015b). Experimentally determined values for the C-factor for most land uses and management systems are easily found in the literature (e.g., Pimenta 1998a). Moreover, both remote sensing and geographical information systems (GIS) techniques can be efficiently used to estimate the C-factor at landscape level (Wang et al. 2003; Lu et al. 2004; Durigon et al. 2014). Nevertheless, the literature does not report the use of the C-factor to address impacts of vegetation density changes over time under the same land use or management type. This provided the motivation for this research.

Soil Conservation is the name given to a handful of techniques aimed at preserving the soil. Soil loss and loss of soil fertility can be traced back to a number of causes including over-use, erosion, salinization, and chemical contamination. Unsustainable subsistence farming and the slash and burn clearing methods used in some less developed regions can often cause deforestation, loss of soil nutrients, erosion on a massive scale, and sometimes even complete desertification.