Essay On Soil Degradation

Soil Degradation. An environmental issue almost no one has heard about even when it’s occurring everywhere in the world. It is affecting mostly China, India, Africa and some parts of South America but the problem is expanding and becoming more serious each day. It’s at the point where soil isn’t considered a renewable resource but a nonrenewable one because we are losing it faster than recovering it.

We know most of our food comes directly or indirectly from plants that grow in the soil but this is not the only utility soil has. It provides a habitat for billions of organisms adding to biodiversity. It also acts as a water filter which helps us filter some wastewater and also holds solid waste. But apart from serving as a waste holder, the soil supplies us many antibiotics used for diseases and helps us with the foundation of cities and towns. Soil degradation is an important environmental issue

These are wind erosion, water erosion, chemical degradation, and physical degradation. Of the four, the most dominant ones are wind and water erosion because the are the ones that occur most frequently.

Soil erosion is caused by water and wind. Both of these degrade soils because it impacts soil quality. This results in loss of nutrient-rich and fertile top layers and reduced water retention. When the land isn 't very fertile, then not a lot of vegetation can grow. This makes it more likely for the soil to erode with the wind because there is no flora to hold on to it.

Chemical degradation deals with the chemical part of the soils. In chemical degradation there is loss of nutrients that reduces the capacity of the soil to to support plant growth and crop production. Chemical degradation also causes salinisation, acidification, soil pollution and fertility decline in the soil. The causes of this type of degradation involve a wide variety of industrial and agricultural