Erosion control strategies? Soil erosion is a complex process that depends on soil properties, ground slope, vegetation, and rainfall amount and intensity. According to Montgomery, modifications in land use are one of the most impactful ways of accelerating soil erosion. These changes then have a cascade effect as the loss of fertile topsoil cover sends millions of tons of sediments into lakes and reservoirs, changing ecosystems and impacting agricultural production and water quality. This has been the case with the Bo River in Vietnam. Despite these types of soil erosion, as we have briefly mentioned above, if it wasn’t for human activities, today’s soils would be less susceptible to erosion and more resilient. What are the human causes behind soil erosion then?
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.
In rivers and estuaries, the erosion of banks is caused by the scouring action of the moving water, particularly in times of flood and, in the case of estuaries, also by the tidal flow on the ebb tide when river and tidewater combine in their erosive action. This scouring action of the moving water entrains (that is, draws in and transports) sediments within the river or stream load. These entrained sediments become instruments of erosion as they abrade one another in suspended transport or as they abrade other rock and soil as they are dragged along the river bottom, progressively entraining additional sediments as long as the river’s volume and velocity of the stream continues to increase. As the velocity of the river decreases, the suspended sediments will be deposited, creating landforms such as broad alluvial fans, floodplains, sandbars, and river deltas. The land surface unaffected by rivers and streams is subjected to a continuous process of erosion by the action of rain, snowmelt, and frost, the resulting detritus (organic debris) and sediment being carried into the rivers and thence to the ocean. See even more details at https://ippio.com/erosion-control-guide-swppp-silt-fence-curlex-blanket/amp/ 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 erosion removes the topsoil that is necessary for organic matter, nutrients, micro-organisms that are required for plants to grow and shine. Soil conservation is one such step that protects the soil from being washed away. The soil then ends up in aquatic resources bringing in pesticides and fertilizers used on agricultural land. Healthy soil is important for plants to grow and flourish. Taking the necessary steps to conserve the soil as part of an environmentally friendly lifestyle. There are several ways to conserve soil that can be done through agricultural practices or measures you take at home.