Soil conservation
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Soil conservation is a set of management strategies for prevention of soil being eroded from the Earth’s surface or becoming chemically altered by overuse, acidification,salinization or other chemical soil contamination. It is a component of environmental soil science.
Erosion barriers on disturbed slope,Marin County, California
Decisions regarding appropriate crop rotation, cover crops, and planted windbreaks are central to the ability of surface soils to retain their integrity, both with respect to erosive forces and chemical change from nutrient depletion. Crop rotation is simply the conventional alternation of crops on a given field, so that nutrient depletion is avoided from repetitive chemical uptake/deposition of single crop growth.
Contents
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1 Erosion prevention
1.1 Practices
1.2 Perimeter runoff control
1.3 Windbreaks
2 Salinity management
3 Soil organisms
4 Mineralization
5 See also
6 References
Erosion prevention[edit]
Contour plowing, Pennsylvania 1938. The rows formed slow water run-off during rainstorms to prevent soil erosion and allows the water time to settle into the soil.
Practices[edit]
There are conventional practices that farmers have invoked for centuries. These fall into two main categories: contour farming andterracing, standard methods recommended by the US Natural Resources Conservation Service, whose Code 330 is the common standard. Contour farming was practiced by the ancient Phoenicians, and is known to be effective for slopes between two and ten percent.[1] Contour plowing can increase crop yields from 10 to 50 percent, partially as a result from greater soil retention.[citation needed]
There are many erosion control examples such...