Soil Degredation: Causes and Impact

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Soil erosion/Soil degradation: Causes & Impact The ever increasing human population, coupled with their “activities” (example…land mismanagement) has a serious impact on earth’s soil/land. The degrading process of earth’s soil, directly or indirectly linked to human actions, affects approximately 1.5 billion people globally. Once these lands are exhausted, it is very difficult, expensive and time consuming to say the least to get it back to the way it was…if possible at all. Question 1 1.1 Soil erosion and Countries most affected by it Having a closer look at soil degradation on a global scale, we will see that South Africa is one of the countries which have a serious land degradation problem. This does not come as a surprise, if you consider that one of the major problems are the amounts of land development and construction that is taking place year in, year out, because of the very high demand of an ever growing population. The same can be said about other countries such as Chile and most parts of India, which are also under severe land degradation pressure. What makes things worst for these countries is the fact they are heavily dependent on agriculture, hence the reason the problem is so serious in these countries. *Topsoil erosion (Land degradation) 1.2 Soil erosion globally Soil erosion is a natural process caused by wind and water. In other words, fertile topsoil needed for production like growing things for personal use or export veggies or fruits for economic gains etc., gets either washed or blown away. The loss of topsoil changes the physical and chemical composition of an area. Water (erosion) can cause areas/terrains to be deformed…uneven displacements of soil occurs which brings about rills, gullies, hollows, dunes etc. Wind (erosion); besides loss of topsoil and land deformation also brings about overblowing that may
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