环境科学专业英语---Unit4---.doc

Erosion Erosion is an important natural process,resulting in the redistributes of the products of geologic weathering, and is part of both soil formation and soil loss. The worlds landscapes have sculpted by erosion. When the results are spectacular enough, we enshrine them in national parks as we did with the Grand Canyon. Where erosion has worn down mountains and spread soil over the plains, or deposited rich alluvial silt on river beds, we gladly farm it.Erosion is a disaster only when it occurs in the wrong place at the wrong time. In some places, erosion occurs so rapidly that anyone can see it happen. Deep gullies are created where water scours away the soil, leaving fence posts and trees sitting on tall pedestals as the land erodes away around them. In most places, however, erosion is subtler. It is a creeping disaster that occurs in small increments. A thin layer of top soil is washed off fields year after year until eventually nothing is left but poor-quality subsoil that requires more and more fertilizer and water to produce any crops at all. The net effect, worldwide, of this general, wide spread top soil erosion is a reduction in crop production equivalent to removing about 1% of world cropland each year. Many farmers are able to compensate for this loss by applying more fertilizer and by bringing new land into cultivation. Continuation of current erosion rates, however, could reduce agricultural production 25% in Central America and Africa and 20% in South America by the year 2000. The total annual soil loss from croplands is thought to be 25 billion metric tons. About twice that much soil is lost from rangelands, forests, and urban construction sites each year. In addition to reduced land fertility, this erosion results in sediment-loading of rivers and lakes, of reservoirs, smothering of wetlands and coral reefs, and clogging of water intakes and waterpower turbines. It makes rivers unnavigable, increases the destructiveness and frequenc