Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Processes
- 2 Regional seismic shaking hazards in mountains
- 3 Volcanic hazards and risks: a geomorphological perspective
- 4 Mountain hazards
- 5 Review and future challenges in snow avalanche risk analysis
- 6 Landslide hazards
- 7 Catastrophic landslides and sedimentary budgets
- 8 Landslides and climatic change
- 9 The hazardousness of high-magnitude floods
- 10 Flood hazards: the context of fluvial geomorphology
- 11 Geomorphology and coastal hazards
- 12 Weathering hazards
- 13 Hazards associated with karst
- 14 Soil erosion
- 15 Desertification and land degradation in arid and semi-arid regions
- 16 Dune migration and encroachment
- Part II Processes and applications of geomorphology to risk assessment and management
- Index
- References
14 - Soil erosion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Processes
- 2 Regional seismic shaking hazards in mountains
- 3 Volcanic hazards and risks: a geomorphological perspective
- 4 Mountain hazards
- 5 Review and future challenges in snow avalanche risk analysis
- 6 Landslide hazards
- 7 Catastrophic landslides and sedimentary budgets
- 8 Landslides and climatic change
- 9 The hazardousness of high-magnitude floods
- 10 Flood hazards: the context of fluvial geomorphology
- 11 Geomorphology and coastal hazards
- 12 Weathering hazards
- 13 Hazards associated with karst
- 14 Soil erosion
- 15 Desertification and land degradation in arid and semi-arid regions
- 16 Dune migration and encroachment
- Part II Processes and applications of geomorphology to risk assessment and management
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction: the nature of the problem
Erosion is a natural phenomenon, but one that has been accelerated by human activities. The scale of accelerated soil erosion that has been achieved by humans has been summarized by Myers (1988, p. 6):
Since the development of agriculture some 12,000 years ago, soil erosion is said by some to have ruined 4.3 million km2 of agricultural lands, or an area equivalent to rather more than one-third of today's crop-lands … the amount of agricultural land now being lost through soil erosion, in conjunction with other forms of degradation, can already be put at a minimum of 200,000 km2 per year.
Accelerated soil erosion is indeed a serious aspect of environmental change and there has been a long history of research (see e.g. Marsh, 1864; Sauer, 1938; Bennett, 1939; Jacks and Whyte, 1939; Morgan, 2005). Although many techniques have been developed to mitigate the problem it appears to be intractable. As Carter (1977, p. 409) reported for the USA:
Although nearly $15 billion has been spent on soil conservation since the mid-1930s, the erosion of croplands by wind and water … remains one of the biggest, most pervasive environmental problems the nation faces. The problem's surprising persistence apparently can be attributed at least in part to the fact that, in the calculation of many farmers, the hope of maximizing short-term crop yields and profits has taken precedence over the longer term advantages of conserving the soil. For even where the loss of topsoil has begun to reduce the land's natural fertility and productivity, the effect is often masked by the positive response to heavy application of fertilizer and pesticides, which keep crop yields relatively high.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Geomorphological Hazards and Disaster Prevention , pp. 177 - 188Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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