LESSON

Soil Degradation and Conservation

Guiding Question: How do erosion, desertification, and soil pollution
affect the productivity of soil?

Describe some practices that can lead to soil erosion

and some that can prevent it.
Identify the causes and effects of desertification.
Discuss the activities of U.S. and international agricultural organizations.
Explain how irrigation and pesticide use can cause
soil pollution.

Reading Strategy Before you read, preview Figure 7. As

you read the photo captions, take notes on how each method
helps to conserve soil.
Vocabulary soil degradation, intercropping, crop rotation,
cover crop, shelterbelt, tilling, terracing, contour farming,
overgrazing, desertification, irrigation, salinization, pesticide.

Scientists studies and the experiences of farmers have shown

12.2 LESSON PLAN PREVIEW

Real World Students discuss

how global desertification can
have local impacts.
Differentiated Instruction
Advanced learners research to
learn more about international
soil conservation programs.
Inquiry Students model salinization of soil.

12.2 RESOURCES
Modeling Lab, Combating Erosion
Lesson 12.2 Worksheets Lesson
12.2 Assessment Chapter 12 Overview Presentation
GUIDING QUESTION
FOCUS Make a two-column table
on the board. In the left column, ask
volunteers to list ways that humans
can damage soils. In the right column, have volunteers list ways that
soil damage can affect humans. At
the conclusion of the lesson, have
students revise the lists to reflect
what they have learned.

358 Lesson 2

that the most productive soil, or the type of soil most plants grow best in,
is loam with a neutral pH that is workable, contains nutrients, and holds
water. Human activities can cause erosion, desertification, and
pollution and make soil less productive. The deterioration of the soil
characteristics needed for plant growth or other ecosystem services is
called soil degradation. Soil degradation results in major ecosystem
changes. It also makes farming more challenging, so it could make it
more difficult to feed Earths growing human population in the future.

Erosion
Certain farming, ranching, and forestry practices can erode soil,
but other practices can protect it.
Erosion and deposition are natural processes that, in the long run, can
help create soil. Flowing water can deposit sediment eroded from other
areas into river valleys and deltas, producing rich and productive soils.
This is why floodplains are excellent for farming and why preventing
floods can decrease long-term farming productivity. But erosion can be a
problem because it usually occurs much more quickly than soil is formed.
Furthermore, erosion tends to remove topsoil, the most fertile soil layer.
And erosion can be gradual and hard to detect. In many parts of the
world now, scientists and farmers are carefully measuring soil depth
in hopes of identifying areas in danger of serious erosion before they
become too badly damaged.
Today, human activities cause more erosion than natural events. More
than 19 billion hectares (47 billion acres) of the worlds croplands now
suffer from erosion and other forms of soil degradation resulting from
human activities. People make fertile soils vulnerable to erosion in several
ways, including leaving soil bare after harvests, overgrazing rangelands,
and clearing forests on steep slopes or with large clear-cuts.

Farming Practices Plant communities, including crops, protect soil

from erosion. Plants slow wind and water, and their roots hold soil in
place and absorb water. After fields are harvested, and there is no plant
cover protecting the soil, wind and water can erode soil, especially if
the land is sloped. Erosion rates in the United States are now declining,
thanks to soil conservation measures such as those in Figure 7.

Figure 7 Soil Conservation Techniques

Intercropping

Crop Rotation
Intercropping is the planting
of different crops in mixed
arrangements. Intercropping helps
slow erosion by providing more
plant cover than a single crop does.
Intercropping also reduces a fields
vulnerability to insects and disease
that specialize in certain crops
because different crops are planted
in the same field. When a nitrogenfixing crop is planted, intercropping
can also replenish the soils fertility.

In crop rotation, farmers alternate

crops grown in a field. Crop rotation
can return nutrients to the soil, break
disease and pest cycles, and prevent
the erosion that can come from
letting fields lie fallow, or unplanted.
In a practice similar to crop rotation,
farmers plant crops to reduce erosion
after a field has been harvested and
before the next seasons planting.
These cover crops help prevent erosion
and often limit nitrogen loss, because
they are often nitrogen-fixing crops
such as alfalfa.

Shelterbelts
A widespread technique for reducing wind erosion is to establish
shelterbelts, or windbreaks. These are rows of trees or other tall,
perennial plants that are planted along the edges of fields to
slow the wind. Fast-growing trees such as poplars are often used
in shelterbelts.
Conservation Tillage
Tilling is the turning-over of soil before planting. It creates more
pores for air and water but makes soil more susceptible to erosion. To
help conserve soil, farmers use no-till or reduced tillage methods. To
plant using the no-till method, a tractor pulls a drill that cuts furrows
through weeds and crop remains and into the topsoil. Seeds and
fertilizer are dropped into the furrows, and they are closed. Reducedtillage agriculture disturbs the soil surface slightly more than no-till
does. By maintaining organic matter in soil, these techniques can
improve soil quality and reduce erosion. They, however, often require
substantial use of weed-killers (because weeds remain in fields) and
fertilizers (because weeds use soil nutrients).
Terracing

Terracing minimizes erosion on steep hillsides. Terracing

transforms steep slopes into a series of steps like a staircase,
enabling farmers to cultivate slopes without losing huge
amounts of soil to water erosion. Terracing is labor-intensive but
is probably the only sustainable way to farm mountains.

Contour Farming
Water running down a hillside erodes soil. Contour farming
reduces erosion on gently sloping hillsides. Contour farming
consists of plowing sideways across a hillside, perpendicular to
the hills slope. The plowed furrows follow the contours of the
land, and the downhill side of each furrow acts as a dam that
catches soil before it is carried away.

Soil and Agriculture 359

Ranching Practices The raising and grazing of livestock, animals

raised to be used on a farm or sold at a profit, also affects soils and ecosystems. When sheep, goats, cattle, or other livestock graze on open rangelands, they feed primarily on grasses. As long as livestock populations
stay within a ranges carrying capacity and do not eat grasses faster than
the grasses can grow back, grazing may be sustainable. However, when
too many animals eat too much of the plant cover, impeding regrowth,
the result is overgrazing.

ANSWERS

Reading Checkpoint Compacted

soil, damaged soil structure, and
removal of native grass
Figure 8 Overgrazing In the
flowchart below, you can see how
overgrazing can set in motion a
positive feedback cycle that degrades
soils and ecosystems. The effects
of overgrazing can be dramatic, as
shown in this photo along a fence line
separating a grassy, ungrazed plot
(left) from a shrubby, overgrazed plot
(right).

Rangeland scientists have shown that overgrazing causes or aggravates several soil problems. Some of these problems give rise to positive feedback cycles that increase damage to soils,
natural communities, and the lands productivity (Figure 8). When
livestock remove too much plant cover, more soil is exposed and made
vulnerable to erosion. Soil erosion makes it difficult for vegetation to
regrow, allowing yet more erosion. Moreover, non-native weedy plants
may invade exposed soils. Livestock often avoid tough non-native plants,
leaving the plants to reproduce and outcompete the native plants the livestock eat, further decreasing useful grazing land.

Effects of Overgrazing

Reading
Checkpoint

 ccording to the flowchart in Figure 8, which problems does

A
overgrazing directly cause?

Range
managers in the United States do their
best to assess the carrying capacity of
rangelands. They inform ranchers, or
livestock owners, of the limits so that
they rotate their herds from site to site.
Range managers also can establish
and enforce grazing limits on publicly owned land. U.S. ranchers have
traditionally had little incentive to
limit grazing, since most of their grazing has taken place on public lands
leased from the government, not on
their own lands. The U.S. government
has also heavily subsidized grazing. These two situations have led to
extensive overgrazing and resulting
environmental problems on many
public lands in the American West.
Today, however, increasing numbers
of ranchers are working cooperatively
with government agencies, environmental scientists, and even environmental advocates to find ways to graze
their animals more sustainably and
safeguard the health of grasslands.

Prevention of Overgrazing

Overgrazing

Decreases
pores for
water

Compacts soil and

damages structure

Removes
native
grass

Decreases
pores
for air

Exposes
bare
topsoil

Decreases grass
growth and survival

360 Lesson 2

Allows invasive
species to
outcompete native
species because of
altered environment
Leads to
wind and
water erosion

Forestry Practices Forestry can also have substantial impacts on

soils. Forestry practices have been altered over the years to try to minimize damage to soils, as you may recall. Nevertheless, some current
methods, such as clear-cutting, can lead to severe erosion, particularly on
steep slopes. Other logging methods, such as selective systems, tend to
lead to less erosion.

Desertification
Desertification reduces productivity of arid lands.
Soil degradation is especially severe in arid environments, where desertification is a concern. Desertification is a loss of more than 10 percent of
productivity due to erosion, soil compaction, forest removal, overgrazing,
drought, salt buildup, climate change, depletion of water sources, and
other factors. Severe desertification can enlarge existing deserts and create
new ones in once-fertile regions. This process has occurred in areas of the
Middle East that have been inhabited, farmed, and grazed for thousands
of yearsincluding the Fertile Crescent region, where agriculture began
more than 10,000 years ago. The Fertile Crescent is not so fertile anymore.
Arid and semiarid lands are prone to desertification because they
get too little precipitation to meet growing human demands for water.
Declines in soil quality in these areas have endangered the food supply
and the well-being of more than 1 billion people. In the affected lands,
most degradation has been caused by wind and water erosion, as you can
see in Figure 9.

Global Desertification By some estimates, desertification affects

one third of Earths land area, costing people tens of billions of dollars
in crop income each year. China alone loses $6.5 billion annually from
desertification. In the western parts of China, desert areas are expanding
and combining because of overgrazing from more than 400 million goats,
sheep, and cattle. In Kenya, overgrazing and deforestation fueled by
rapid population growth has left 80 percent of the land vulnerable to
desertification. In an ever-intensifying cycle, soil degradation forces
ranchers to crowd their animals onto less-productive land and farmers
to keep planting in poor soils, both of which worsen desertification.
A 2007 United Nations report estimated that desertification, worsened by climate change, could displace 50 million people in 10 years.
The report suggested that industrialized nations fund reforestation
projects in dryland areas of the developing world. This would slow
desertification while gaining these nations carbon credits in emissions
trading programs. It would be worth their cost and effort: Desertification knows no national boundaries. In recent years, gigantic dust
storms from desertified land in China have blown across the Pacific
Ocean to North America, and dust storms from Africas Sahara have
blown across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Sea.
Reading
Checkpoint

List five possible causes of desertification.

ANSWERS

Reading Checkpoint Students

may list any five of the following or
other reasonable answers: erosion,
soil compaction, forest removal,
overgrazing, drought, salt buildup,
climate change, depletion of water
sources
Figure 9 Soil Degradation Soil
degradation on drylands is due
primarily to erosion by wind and water.
(Percentages add up to more than 100
percent because of rounding.)

Causes of Soil Degradation

Soil structure problems
(3.4%)

Chemical
problems
(9.7%)

Wind
erosion
(41.8%)
Water
erosion
(45.2%)

Data from U.N. Environment Programme. 2002. Tackling

land degradation and desertification. Washington and
Rome: Global Environment Facility and International Fund
for Agricultural Development.

Soil and Agriculture 361

Figure 10 Dust Bowl In the

1930s, drought combined with
poor agricultural practices brought
devastation to millions of U.S.
farmers in the southern Great Plains.
The photo shows towering clouds
of dust approaching houses near
Stratford, Texas, in a 1935 dust
storm. The map shows the Dust Bowl
region, with darker colors indicating
the areas most affected.
BIG QUESTION
How can we balance our growing
demand for food with our need to
protect the environment?
Application Have students discuss
in small groups why people should
keep in mind the lessons of the Dust
Bowl as they seek new ways to keep
up with the growing demand for
food.

The Dust Bowl Massive dust storms have also occurred in the

United States. During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, desertification shook
American agriculture and society as a whole to their very roots.
Prior to large-scale farming on North Americas Great Plains, the
native prairie grasses there held the soil in place. In the late 1800s and
early 1900s, many settlers arrived in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, New
Mexico, and Colorado hoping to make a living as farmers. Between 1879
and 1929, the farmed area of the Great Plains increased by 700 percent.
Farmers grew abundant wheat, and ranchers grazed thousands of cattle,
sometimes on unsuitable land. Both types of agriculture contributed to
erosion by removing the grasses that had conserved the soil and by breaking down the soil structure.
Then in the early 1930s, a drought occurred, aggravating that erosion. The regions strong winds began to erode millions of tons of topsoil,
which would blow around in huge dust clouds (Figure 10). Dust storms
traveled up to 2000 kilometers (1200 miles) across the continent, blackening rain and snow as far away as New York. Some areas lost as much as
10 centimeters (4 inches) of topsoil in a few years. The most-affected
region, the southern Great Plains, became known as the Dust Bowl, a
term now also used for the event itself. The Dust Bowl forced thousands
of farmers off their land.

Soil Conservation Policies

U.S. and international agricultural organizations promote soil
conservation.
In response to the devastation of the Dust Bowl, the U.S. government,
along with state and local governments, increased support for soil conservation research. In the United States, the Natural Resources Conservation
Service works through county conservation districts to promote soil
conservation and conservation of other natural resources. Various United
Nations programs have similar responsibilities elsewhere.

U.S. Policies In 1935, the U.S. Congress passed the Soil Conservation

Act, establishing the Soil Conservation Service (SCS). The SCS began to
work with farmers to develop conservation plans for their farms.
362 Lesson 2

In 1994, the SCS was renamed the Natural Resources Conservation

Service, and its responsibilities were expanded to include water quality
protection and pollution control. Recently, the U.S. Congress has enacted
provisions promoting soil conservation through the farm bills it passes
every 5 to 6 years. Many of these provisions require farmers to adopt soil
conservation plans before they can receive government subsidies. The
Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), established in the 1985 farm bill,
pays farmers to stop cultivating cropland that erodes easily and to instead
place it in conservation reserves planted with grasses and trees. Land
under the CRP now covers an area nearly the size of Iowa, and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that each dollar invested in
this program saves nearly 1 ton of topsoil. Besides reducing erosion, the
CRP generates income for farmers, improves water quality, and provides
habitat for wildlife. Congress reauthorized and expanded the CRP in the
farm bills of 1996, 2002, and 2008.

International Programs Internationally, the United Nations pro-

motes soil conservation and sustainable agriculture through its Food

and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The FAOs Farmer-Centered
Agricultural Resource Management Program (FARM) supports creative
approaches to resource management challenges in many developing
nations. Rather than relying on government control of farming practices,
FARM calls upon local leaders to educate and encourage local farmers.

Soil Pollution
Irrigation and pesticide use can improve soil productivity in the
short term, but they can pollute soil in the long term.
Erosion is not the only threat to the health of soils. You might think
that watering crops and protecting them from pests would improve soil
health, but that is not always the case.

Irrigation The providing of water other than precipitation to crops is

known as irrigation. Some crops, such as rice and cotton, require large
amounts of water, whereas others, such as beans and wheat, require relatively little. By irrigating crops, people have managed to turn previously
dry and unproductive regions into fertile farmland.

Figure 11 Salinization In this

cross-section of salinized soil, the
white crust is salt.

Irrigation is not without consequences. Too much, or carelessly timed, irrigation can
result in waterlogged crops. A more frequent problem is
salinization, the buildup of salts in upper soil horizons.
In dry areas where precipitation is minimal and evaporation rates are high, water evaporating from the soils A
horizon may pull water up from lower horizons by capillary action. As this water rises through the soil, it carries
dissolved salts. When the water evaporates at the surface,
those salts remain, as you can see in Figure 11. Irrigation
water also usually contains some dissolved salts, so it
adds salt to the soil, increasing the salinization.

Salinization Causes

Soil and Agriculture 363

Salinization currently decreases harvests on

20 percent of all irrigated cropland worldwide, costing farmers $11 billion
in crop income each year, so it is a very expensive problem. And it is
easier to prevent than to correct. The best way to prevent salinization is
to avoid planting crops that require a great deal of water in dry areas. A
second way is to irrigate with water that is low in salt content. A third way
is to irrigate efficiently, supplying no more water than the crop requires
and supplying it as close to the roots as possible. Drip irrigation systems
that target water directly at plant roots are one option. Less water evaporates, which means less salt accumulates in the topsoil. Drip irrigation
also conserves water and dramatically decreases erosion.
It might seem that the remedy is to stop irrigating and wait for rain to
flush salts from the soil. But remember where irrigation is needed. Salinization generally becomes a problem only in dry areas where precipitation
is too little to even water crops, never mind to flush salt from the soil. A
better option is to plant salt-tolerant plants, such as barley, that can be
used as food or pasture. Another option is to bring in large quantities of
less-salty water with which to flush the soil. However, too much water can
waterlog crops and wash out soil nutrients.

Salinization Solutions

ANSWERS

Lesson 2 Assessment
1. Sample answers: Eroding practice:
leaving soil bare after harvests;
conserving practice: using cover
crops to prevent erosion and limit
nitrogen loss
2. Sample answer: Overgrazing
and planting in poor soil further
degrade soil, which can lead to
desertification.
3. Answers will vary but should
include the effects of the CRP as
described in the text.
4. Irrigation causes salinization,
which makes soil too salty for
many plants; pesticides can linger
in soil, causing harm to humans
and other organisms.
5. Answers will vary but should be
supported by content in the text.

Pesticides Chemicals that kill organisms that attack or compete with

plants we value are called pesticides. Pesticides may kill plant, animal,
fungal, bacterial, or viral pests. (Chemicals that kill other plants are
sometimes called herbicides.) Some pesticides are toxic to humans. Toxic
pesticides and the chemicals they break down into may remain in soil for
long periods of time, basically poisoning it. And they can filter through
the soil into the groundwater and evaporate into the air. Although pesticides may increase the the amount of a crop produced in a given area in
the short term, they can be hazardous to humans and other animals in the
long term. And broad-spectrum pesticides kill a wide variety of insects,
some of which may be helpful to soil. So pesticides can be hazardous to
soil health as well. You will read more about pesticides in the next lesson.

2
1. Review Describe one farming practice that can
erode soil and one farming practice that can conserve soil.
2. Relate Cause and Effect Explain how overgrazing and planting in poor soil can cause a cycle of
desertification.
3. Communicate In your own words, write one paragraph about the effects of the Conservation Reserve
Program.
4. Explain How can irrigation and pesticides cause
soil pollution?

364 Lesson 2

5.

You are a land manager

with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and
have just been put in charge of 200,000 hectares
(500,000 acres) of public lands that have been
degraded by decades of overgrazing and poor
management. Soil is eroding. Invasive weeds are
replacing native grasses. Environmentalists want to
end grazing on the land. Ranchers want grazing to
continue, but they are concerned about the lands
condition. How would you assess the lands condition and begin restoring its soil and vegetation?
Would you allow grazing, and if so, would you set
limits on it?