Erosion is the natural process of dismantling things through physical or chemical means and occurs worldwide.
Rain and wind erosion are major contributors to soil loss. Precipitation levels, temperatures ranges, seasonal variations and other elements play a part in how quickly soil erosion occurs.
Water
Erosion occurs due to water and wind movement, which shifts soil or rock from one place and deposits it somewhere else. Although erosion is a natural process, its pace may be increased through human actions such as mining.
Water erosion occurs when soil from mountains, valleys and coastlines is washed away by rivers or washed off of beaches; creating lakes or rivers and eroding floodplains. Erosion tends to accelerate during storms or heavy rainfall events or when terrain is left exposed – especially when stormy conditions exist or rainfall intensity is high enough.
Physical erosion alters the shape of rocks by dislodging their pieces and breaking their surfaces apart, often leaving behind clastic sediment containing weathered and non-weathered rock fragments. Physical erosion may also result in mass wasting, including landslides or rockfalls which carry off huge amounts of dirt and debris along their path.
Water erosion threatens topsoil, an essential resource for many interdependent plants and animals as well as crop production. Furthermore, it pollutes waterways with chemicals from agricultural fields contaminating drinking water sources causing fish kills as well as poisonous drinking water sources.
Wind
Wind blows particles of dust and sand which wear away surfaces they come into contact with, including rocks and soil. Wind-induced erosion may seem slow at first glance; but over time its destructiveness becomes clear: rocks falling from mountainsides can tumble down them or wash away sediment from riverbanks – these events of denudation.
Erosion is a natural process, but humans can accelerate it significantly. By cutting down trees or overgrazing animals too heavily, they destroy plants that hold soil together – leading to more likely erosion as a result.
Heavy rains contribute to erosion as they splash onto the ground, known as rain-splash erosion. Rivers transport weathered debris away, depositing it in floodplains or carving river valleys. Waves also erode shorelines to form amazing landforms like sea arches or chimneys along their paths. While tectonic activity can hasten this process by altering the landscape shape, climate and topography have greater effects than these factors on erosion rates.
Glaciers
Glaciers form the land around them through two main processes: plucking and abrasion. When glaciers move across mountain landscapes, they create U-shaped valleys and bowl-shaped depressions called cirques; when multiple cirques come close together they form thin ridges known as aretes.
Ice itself does not cause much erosion; however, embedded rock fragments do. Think of it like using sandpaper on wood; long scratches known as glacial striations marks remain as evidence that an area was once covered by glaciers.
Size and temperature both have an effect on how easily a glacier erodes, with larger, warmer glaciers being more erosive than smaller, cooler ones. Research has also demonstrated that latitude plays an influential role as warming climate glaciers are much more erosive than Antarctic ones; similarly bedrock susceptibility plays an impactful role. Melting glaciers also leave behind physical debris which contributes to physical erosion.
Human Activity
Erosion is a natural process that breaks down and moves rocks, soil or other dissolved material across Earth’s surface. This differs from weathering which involves changing rock shapes but does not involve movement of material.
Erosion can be caused by many sources. Rivers erode mountain sides over time due to shear energy in the form of shear forces which break apart rocks into smaller particles carried downstream, while ocean waves also contribute. Erosion may even be brought about through tectonic activity altering the land surface itself.
Human activities often increase erosion rates. Logging, for instance, removes trees that hold soil together and contribute to its degradation by losing leaf litter that keeps topsoil moist; agriculture too contributes to it through plowing fields, grazing livestock on surface vegetation removal or driving over grassy areas with vehicles which churn up soil further – all activities which churn up and loosen it further.