Factors Of Soil Erosion - What Are These Factors?

Factors Of Soil Erosion – What Are These Factors?

FACTORS OF SOIL EROSION – In this topic, we are going to learn and identify the following factors of soil erosion.

Erosion is an action or process which involves the removing of soil, rock, or dissolved material from one area from the crust or the other.

Factors

There are 6 known main factors of this process:

Water
- It is the primary leading cause of erosion. It comes in many forms Among those were:
  - Rain and Overland Flow
    - Rain is one form of water erosion. Overland flow or surface runoff is the aftermath of rain. It results in four kinds:
      - Splash erosion
      - Sheet erosion
      - Rill erosion
      - Gully erosion
  - Rivers and Streams
    - Caused by continued water flow along a linear feature. It has two kinds:
      - Bank erosion
      - Thermal erosion
  - Coastal Erosion
    - Also known as shoreline erosion, it occurs on both exposed and sheltered coasts.
  - Floods
    - The extreme form of water erosion. large volumes of rapidly rushing water could cause kolks or vortexes, which could cause extreme local erosion.
Chemical
- Loss of matter in a landscape. The matter is in the form of solutes.
Glaciers
- also known as ice erosion, they erode into three ways:
  - Abrasion/scouring
  - Plucking
  - Ice thrusting
Wind
- One of the major causes of erosion and also one of the sources of land degradation, evaporation, desertification, harmful airborne dust, and crop damage. It has two forms:
  - Deflation
  - Abrasion
Mass Movement
- Refers to the downward and outward movement of rock and sediments on a sloped surface because of the force of gravity.