Soil and soil erosion

The indicator gives a useful picture of soil health and productivity, particularly when considered with other soil health indicators, such as the Soil Organic Matter Indicator. The effects of soil erosion go beyond the loss of fertile land. It has led to increased pollution and sedimentation in streams and rivers, clogging these waterways and causing declines in fish and other species. It occurs in almost all types of lands. The erosion hazard can be increased by surface crusting and by frozen soils. Over the years, models have been improved to include new parameters (i.e., stone cover) and improve their reliability. Soil Erosion Indicator. Too much of soil erosion causes serious loss of topsoil and also reduces crop production potential, lower surface water quality, and damaged drainage networks. Soil Erosion is one form of soil degradation. Soil erosion models infer the mean amount of soil loss by combining several abiotic factors (e.g., rainfall intensity and soil physico‐chemical properties). Italy is the country that suffers the highest economic impact.

And degraded lands are also often less able to hold onto water, which can worsen flooding. Thus crop yields decline and the people must spend income to import foreign fertilizers or clear additional forest. Soil erosion is a natural process that can be exacerbated by human activities and is the wearing away of the land surface by physical forces such as rainfall, flowing water, wind, ice, temperature change, gravity, or other natural or anthropogenic agents that abrade, detach, and remove soil or geological material from one point on the earth's surface to be deposited elsewhere [30]. Soil loss of up to 450 tonnes ha −1 per year has been recorded in autumn-planted winter wheat, where surface protection from rainsplash is minimal over winter. Water erosion is a serious problem in loessial soils. Only a minority of areas have good soils, which after clearing are quickly washed away by the heavy rains. Flowing water, rainwater, and the wind are the prime agents which cause a significant amount of soil loss each year. The loss of trees, which anchor the soil with their roots, causes widespread erosion throughout the tropics. Soil erosion raised great attention at EU level and it was included as an indicator in the 2012 Climate Change Impacts and Vulnerability report of the European Environment Agency (EEA). Soil erosion models with sediment yield as an output seem to exaggerate the amount of soil loss and are difficult to validate, although they do offer a way to examine the relative changes in erosion rate under different land uses and changing climates. The Soil Erosion Risk Indicator assesses the risk of soil erosion by water, wind and tillage in the Canadian agricultural landscape. Soil Erosion. Panagos et al.