Understanding Soil Erosion by Water to Improve Soil Conservation

Soil Erosion and Conservation

A Cellular Automata Model for Soil Erosion by Water

A Cellular Automata model for soil erosion by water, SCAVATU, was developed. It involves a larger number of states in comparison to the previous models: alti-sidering some of the most significant processes of the phenomenon: water flow, infiltration, soil erosion by water flow, sediment transport and deposition. Simulations gave encouraging results, in agreement with the findings of other studi...

Soil Erosion by Water: Contemporary Research Methods and Their Use

According to a UN Environment Programme survey, topsoil is eroding faster than it forms on about one third of the world’s cropland, causing an estimated 85 % of the world s land degradation from human activities. Erosion of soil, mainly by water, is also a problem in the Czech Republic where 54 % of arable land is endangered by water erosion. The topic of this article is to describe contemporar...

Socio-economic factors in soil erosion and conservation

Farmer decisions with regard to production and land use are strongly influenced by socio-economic factors. In the developed world, the role of agricultural subsidies, quotas and guaranteed prices is especially important. In the past there have been many examples of economic signals which led to unfortunate and unforeseen environmental consequences (‘perverse subsidies’), including soil erosion....

Environmental and economic costs of soil erosion and conservation benefits.

Soil erosion is a major environmental threat to the sustainability and productive capacity of agriculture. During the last 40 years, nearly one-third of the world's arable land has been lost by erosion and continues to be lost at a rate of more than 10 million hectares per year. With the addition of a quarter of a million people each day, the world population's food demand is increasing at a ti...