Soil Productivity and Erosion

Abstract

The wide-scale cultivation of soil by humans has accelerated erosion, which in turn deteriorates soils and negatively impacts their productivity. Questions such as ‘How serious is soil erosion?’, ‘What are the costs of soil erosion?’, and ‘Why and where is it happening?’ are difficult to answer because they require interdisciplinary approaches and funding. This chapter considers some of these problems. It makes an inventory of accelerated erosion rates, and places these within the context of both soil formation rates and erosion rates under natural conditions. The chapter examines the effects of erosion on agricultural productivity and the importance of erosion-induced productivity losses for agriculture, concluding that erosion-induced onsite productivity losses as well as the downstream effects of erosion may become an important environmental threat.