Soil Erosion

Everyone has heard of soil erosion. If you live in the city soil erosion isn't a big problem. If you live in a small farm town, soil erosion can ruin the farmer's crops. To understand why soil erosion is such a huge problem one must first look at how soil is formed and what it is compacted of. After that, it is easier to understand the three types of soil erosion-wind, water, and tillage-and how to conserve our soil.

To understand why farmers try to stop the soil from eroding, what soil is compacted of and how it forms will make it easier. The components of soil are constantly changing. Mainly, soil is made up of four things: minerals, plant and animal matter, water, and air. Different combinations of these components determine what kinds of crops grow best on that kind of soil.

The minerals in soil mainly consist of sands, slits, and clays. In the sands and slits the minerals in it consist of quartz and feldspars. The amounts of minerals add a lot of nutrients to the soil such as the following: calcium, phosphorous, and potassium. The clays in the soil are mainly consists of these types of minerals, illite, kaolin, micas, vermiculite, and a lot of other minerals. Soils are called mineral soils if more than 80 percent of the soil particles are minerals.

The plant and animal matter part of soil is not as complex. It is a bunch of decaying plants and animals. There are a lot of living organisms in the soil these organisms are: plant roots, microbes, worms, insects, and small animals that make their burrows in the ground. The fungus that you find on dead plants and animals is decomposing them with the help of the plants and animals living in the soil. Without the decaying matter making rich humus soil-soil rich in nutrients, which is usually black or dark brown-there wouldn't be any soil and the soil wouldn't aggregate (come together). If twenty percent of the soil is made up of plant or animal matter, then the soil is called and organic soil. Both water and air fill the soil's empty spaces.

Soil is formed by all of these components: minerals, plant and animal matter, water, and air. The differences in climate, component material, plants and animals in the region, land surface features, and time determines how long the process of making new soil and what kind of soil will be. Through the process of erosion, soil that took thousands of years to form can be destroyed in one harsh storm.

Without any soil, there wouldn't be any soil erosion. The three types of soil erosion is water, wind, and tillage. To start off with, water erosion is the most common. When it rains with very fiercely for example, during a hurricane or a terrible storm, more vulnerable soil is dragged away with the water than if it is raining lightly. One of the common types of water erosion is called rain splash. What happens during rain splash erosion is rain drops hit bare soil directly. The soil can only be mover about a couple centimeters. Soil is just redistributed it is not lost.

Another type of erosion is called inter-rill erosion. Inter- rill erosion is the movement of soil from rain splash and how it's transported. In other words, if you look at the soil when it's raining and it goes somewhat down hill you can see water droplets forming a really small creeks not even a centimeter deep in the grass. That is what inter-rill erosion is, it's not that serious; it's like rain splash erosion it just redistributes the soil. It's mainly affected by the intensity of the rainfall and the slope length and steepness.

Rill erosion is erosion when water flows from a small channel. The channel must be less than one foot to be considered erosion of the rill. The rainfall that doesn't go into the soil while it's raining will run down the hill. An erosion a little larger than rill erosion would be gully erosion. Gully erosion is when runoff exceeds deeper than one foot of water.. The last type of water erosion is stream bank erosion, and that is when rivers or streams overflow their banks. For example, the Mississippi River this river constantly overflows its banks, it's moving, and the water is brown because of the erosion. Every year the Mississippi River gets a little wider from stream bank erosion.

If you're mathematics inclined, there is a formula that you can use that is called the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation or RUSLE. The formula is as follows: A= R*K*LS*C*P. To break it down, A means annual soil loss, R is how erosive the rain was-was it an intense rain or a light drizzle?-K is how strongly the soil is compacted, what type of soil it is, LS is the slope length and steepness, C is how the crops are managed, and P the erosion control practices used. I don't have any examples of this formula, but it is effective because it was developed by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture).