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Causes of land degradation
• Causes of land degradation are the agents
that determine the rate of degradation.
Unit 1: Land degradation
• Biophysical (land use and land management,
problems including deforestation and tillage methods),
Gandhiv Kafle • Socioeconomic (e.g. land tenure, marketing,
institutional support, income), and
Lecturer, IOF, Hetauda
• Political (e.g. incentives, political stability)
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Land & land degradation? Process of land degradation
• Land: includes not only the soil resource, but • Physical processes: decline in soil structure
also the water, vegetation, landscape, and leading to compaction, erosion,
microclimatic components of an ecosystem. desertification, environmental pollution, and
• Land degradation: temporary or permanent unsustainable use of natural resources.
lowering of the productive capacity of land • Chemical processes: acidification, leaching,
• It covers the various forms of soil degradation, salinization, decrease in cation retention
adverse human impacts on water resources, capacity, and fertility depletion.
deforestation, and lowering of the productive • Biological processes: reduction in total and
capacity of rangelands. biomass carbon, and decline in land
WME 508: Soil and water conservation
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Impacts of land degradation
• Land degradation is a major problem in all • Onsite impacts: decline in land quality on site
South Asian countries. where degradation occurs (e.g. erosion)
• Degradation caused by water is perhaps the • Offsite impacts: sedimentation of reservoirs,
greatest challenge facing South Asia, as many dams, decline in river water quality, air
areas have periods of high rainfall and steep pollution (carbon emission), food scarcity and
mountainous regions. malnutrition
• The steep terrain of Nepal is susceptible to soil
erosion and landslides.
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Estimates of the global extent (in million
km2) of land degradation (Oldeman, 1994)
Water erosion
• Water erosion is the process of detaching the
soil particles from the land surface of one
place and its transportation to another place
for deposition by water.
• Water erosion involves three distinct
processes: a. Detachment, b. Transportation
and c. Deposition
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Main forms of water erosion Wind erosion
• Splash erosion • Wind erosion is the erosion of soil by the
• Sheet erosion action of wind.
• Rill erosion • It is caused by the transportation of soil
• Gully erosion particles from one place to another through
• Stream bank erosion wind.
Rills: <1 foot depth
Small gullies: <3 feet depth
Medium gullies: 3‐15 feet depth
Large gullies: 15‐30 feet depth
Ravines: >30 feet depth
Soil movement due to wind
Water erosion prediction equation
erosion
• Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE; Wischmeier &
Smith 1978).
• E=RKLSCP
– E is the mean annual soil loss,
– R is the rainfall erosivity factor,
– K is the soil erodibility factor,
– L is the slope length factor, S is the slope steepness factor,
– C is the crop management factor and
– P is the erosion‐control practice factor.
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