Environtmental and Global Health

What is Erosion?

The process is called erosion of theft or wear floor intact rock, by action of exogenous geological processes such as surface water flows or glacial ice, wind, or temperature changes. The eroded material can be:

By the very action of wind, water, glaciers and thermal expansion-contraction seasonal or diurnal variations.

Erosion usually is seen as a further process of degradation of soils. However, more rigorous, should differentiate between the mechanisms of damage or deterioration and loss of the resource. Among the latter could include erosion and sealing, while among the first the rest of the general mind in the literature (contamination, compaction, salinisation, etc..).

Because the soil is a renewable natural resource on a human scale, its loss by erosion or sealing can be considered irreversible. Consequently, the environmental problem generated must be addressed through preventive measures. By contrast, the degradation is also generally recognized rehabilitation techniques.

In this contribution break down the types of processes we call erosion.

Erosion is a process in itself, but the phenomenological manifestation of a multitude of processes that lead to loss of soil resources, without involving the sealing and urban infrastructure. Thus, a very general classification would distinguish between water erosion, wind and tillage. The first two befall also under natural conditions. But man, by practice, it tends to accelerate, to the extent that the losses can be offset by natural rates of soil formation. It is in these situations where there is a serious environmental problem. In extreme cases, can generate the so-called desertification, which is only the phenomenological manifestation of the loss or degradation of soil under arid, semiarid and dry-subhumid.

By contrast, tillage erosion is a genuine man-made phenomenon, since no direct natural forces (except gravity), but human intervention through its practices and technologies. The magnitude of the erosion process as the latter only recently begun to be recognized, as has happened also with the sealing of streets.

credit to: Wildor Huanca Apaza

Possibility Related Posts:

• Soil Erosion
• Types of Soil Erosion (III)
• Types of Soil Erosion (II)
• Types of Soil Erosion (IV)
• Types of Soil Erosion (V)