Human Activities affect Soil

1. Human Activities affect Soil Soil is a resource that you can’t live without. Whether its supplying you with food, oxygen, or clean water. It sustains life!

2. Human Activities affect Soil Activities that affect soil resources are: • Farming • Construction and development • Mining

3. Human Activities affect Soil • Farming is how humans have received their food for over 10,000 years. • Farmers often add nutrients to their soils in the form or organic or artificial fertilizers to make crops grow better.

4. Human Activities affect Soil • Over time farming practices can lead to the loss of soil. • Such as when farmers clear land • American farmers lose about 5 metric tons of soil for every ton of grain they produce.

5. Human Activities affect Soil • Overgrazing can also occur, which is when farm animals eat large amounts of land cover. • Just like when farmers clear trees, this prevents the soil to wash or blow away. • This can cause desertification

6. Human Activities affect Soil • To make various buildings and sites people need to dig up soil. • A lot of this can cause the soil to wash or be blown away which can cause rivers and lakes to become muddy.

7. Human Activities affect Soil • The affects can lead to flooding or can fill up lakes and reservoirs.

8. Human Activities affect Soil • Certain methods of mining can also cause soil loss.

9. Human Activities affect Soil • Strip mining and open pit mining involves the removal of plants. • This can cause more exposure to air and water, which can speed up the process of chemical weathering

10. Human Activities affect Soil • The speed up of chemical weathering can cause a type of pollution called acid drainage. • This acid can seep into the soil and be harmful to plants trying to grow.

11. Human Activities affect Soil • Soil is so important to not only humans but the world. So its important that we conserve our soil.

12. Human Activities affect Soil • There are 5 methods for soil conservation • Crop Rotation • Conservation Tillage • Terraces • Contour Plowing • Windbreaks

13. Human Activities affect Soil • Crop Rotation is the practice of planting different crops on the same field in different years or growing seasons.

14. Human Activities affect Soil • As you move your crops the harvest will remove different nutrients from the soil, thus not depleting the soil.

15. Human Activities affect Soil • Conservation Tillage includes the way farmers limit the number of times fields are tilled or plowed in a year. • The less the soil is disturbed the less likely it will be blown or washed away.

16. Human Activities affect Soil • Terracing are fields that are set up as flat step like areas built on a hillside to hold rainwater and prevent it from running downhill. • Crops are planted on the flat tops of the terraces.

17. Human Activities affect Soil • Contour plowing is plowing on the curves of slopes. It helps so that rainwater does not run straight downhill.

18. Human Activities affect Soil • Windbreaks are rows of trees planted between fields to “break” or reduce the number of force winds that can carry off soil.