Soil degradation by erosion

Abstract Soil degradation by accelerated erosion is a serious problem and will remain so during the 21st century, especially in developing countries of the tropics and subtropics. Yet, its extent, severity, and economic and environmental impacts are debatable. Estimates of global and regional land area affected are tentative and subjective. Results of field measurements are often technique‐dependent. Considerable progress has been made in modeling soil erosion, yet field validation of these models remains to be done for principal soils and ecoregions. Similar to the land area affected, estimates of erosional impacts on crop yield, productivity and soil quality are tentative and subjective. Further, erosion‐induced losses on crop yield are scale‐dependent because of the compensatory beneficial effects on yields from depositional sites, and technology‐dependent because of the masking effects of input such as fertilizers and irrigation. Erosion caused changes in soil carbon dynamics and non‐point source water pollution are important environmental impacts. While erosion (e.g., detachment and transport) can lead to emission of trace gases into the atmosphere, deposition can bury and sequester some of the carbon. In addition to improving the database on the land area affected, there is also a need to assess erosional impacts on productivity and soil C balance at the watershed, regional, and global scale. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.