95% of the world’s food is grown thanks to the nutrient-rich upper layer of the land — topsoil. That point is making topsoil the most crucial element in providing food for the global population. Topsoil — is the treasure trove of all the major nutrients and soil organic matter for the crops. Usually, around 5–10 inches (15–23 cm) deep into the ground, soil contains the most vital nutrients to grow high-quality yields.
According to WWF, half of the planet’s topsoil has been lost in the last 150 years, mainly because of mechanical erosion.
Geologists also mention that we are losing about one percent of the topsoils to erosion yearly, frequently because of agricultural activities.
Due to the many different causes, soil erosion is classified as water, wind, glacier, snow, and anthropogenic (natural) soil erosion.
There are plenty of soil erosion types — sheet erosion, reel erosion, gully erosion, tunnel erosion, bank erosion, mass movement, scalding, etc. However, now we are focusing on mechanical erosion.
The impact on erosion on the global economy
More than for the environment, soil erosion is damaging to the whole economy. Different studies measure the effect of soil erosion and making various estimates of soil erosion costs, ranging from $27.9 billion to $73.8 billion per year for the United States. The cost of soil erosion for the European countries is almost 1.4 billion euros in annual productivity loss and affects about 7.2 percent of the total agricultural lands. Land degradation causes $10 billion to South Asia annually.
Due to soil erosion, we are losing 3.4 tonnes of fertile soils per year per person, affecting production quality.
This low-quality production not only makes less profit for farmers who sell it, but it also provides fewer nutrients to the people who consume it.
Land management as a human-related factor affecting soil erosion
Erosion is often perceived as a slow process that can happen by wind or water, but intensive farming accelerates this process.
Human activities are a leading cause in erosion processes compared with physical factors through their unsustainable soil management solutions, which boost soil degradation by changing its chemical, biological and physical characteristics.
The variety of nowadays land-use practices, like intensive machinery tillage, chemical overuse, and pesticide usage, are devastating for soils and deprive them of the ability to provide growers with rich yields.
Recent studies mention that conventional tillage produces the most erosion by leaving less than 30 percent ground cover.
Intense land usage with continuous use of large amounts of chemical fertilizers leads to numerous issues such as loss of soil carbon, reduction in soil organic matter, severe soil degradation. Together they are accelerating the process of soil erosion.
Potential threats of soil erosion as a form of land degradation
Loss in nutrition-rich soils
Since the topsoils are harming first during the land-disturbing activities, the most recognized problem is the lack of vital nutrients and reduced ability to store the water.
Down-slope movement of soil
Soil erosion as a result of soil cultivation has a high potential for “local” soil movement. Also, this type of erosion is a significant contributor to water erosion.
Influence crop development and yields
Growth is limited and slow because of weak soil structure and loss of organic matter and is more likely to stress under an unfavorable environment.
What can we do today?
The problem of reducing mechanical soil erosion is both environmental and humanitarian, as growing populations increase food production and contribute to the destruction of the soils by mechanical erosion.
According to the report, agricultural activities cause 27 percent of the total soil degradation process.
Soil degradation through erosion should be monitored at the state level. And this issue can be resolved, and we know how to do it.
In SoilMate, our Team develops functionality that can detect mechanical erosion using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. This solution would help to locate the wind and water erosion areas to repair and avoid its spreading.
There is no precise method to overcome land degradation fast and easily. However, remote sensing with satellite imagery can help identify the issue and to deal with it.
