John Vang
Professor McKay
GEO 1021
The Degradation of Earth’s Skin
Earth’s skin, the very flesh of this planet, is slowly degrading due to human impact; this result is desertification. According to our book, Discovering Physical Geography, desertification is “the process through which a formerly vegetated landscape gradually becomes desert-like (Page number).” The process of desertification is an ongoing issue that has inflicted major harm to landscapes all around the globe. Amongst the many that has degraded the land, consequences have been paid dearly. In this paper, I will review the causes, effect, and spread of desertification throughout the World. (TOO BROAD) To get us going, I will explain the many factors that has set
…show more content…
The Great Plains is now a barren wasteland. The cause for vegetation removal, such as in the Great Plains, vary upon many factors.
Alone or in combination, the removal of vegetation can be caused by overgrazing, deforestation, unsustainable farming practices, inappropriate irrigation practices that leads to salinity, and much more. These causes are in turn associated with a wide range of other problems, thus speeding the process of desertification. Some include: drought, climate shifts, growing populations, poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and inappropriate technologies (oasisglobal). I will explain a few of these problems and their association with desertification.
Depending on how it is managed, agriculture can play a positive or negative role on the landscape. In the case of unsustainable farming practices, the landscape is bound for a negative road. Such practices can include the use of intense fire to promote nutrients for the crops. According to Green Facts, an organization that provides information on Health and the Environment, the excessive use of intense fire can cause “irreversible changes in ecological processes, and ultimately, to desertification.” This in turn changes the soil organic matter, causes erosion, and changes the habitat for many plant and animal species (GreenFacts). However, this is not the only human-inducing practice that has caused the lost of vegetation leading into desertification.
Inappropriate irrigational
“Erosion occurs when the soil lacks protective vegetative cover”. (Pimentel, Kounang, 1998) “Soil erosion reduces the productivity of the land by loss of water, soil, organic matter, nutrients, biota, and depth of soil.” (Pimentel, Kounang, 1998) With no conservation methods in place in certain places like: no contour farming, no cover crop, no terraces, no water ways, and tillage on steep hills is asking for a loss of productivity from the land. The effects on the land that non-conservation methods have is horrible. “Its effects are pervasive, and its damages are long lasting. (Pimentel and others 1995a)” (Pimentel, Kounang, 1998) Soil loss is a bigger factor then most people think. For an example an comparison of how much soil is actually lost in certain environments: “On sloping agricultural land under tropical rainfall, as much as 400t/ha/yr of soil is lost (Pimentel unpublished report,1990).”(Pimentel, Kounang, 1998) “Under arid conditions with relatively strong winds, as much as 5600t/ha/yr of soil has been reported lost (Gupta and Raina 1996).” (Pimentel, Kounang, 1998) Soil loss is a huge factor when conservation practices are not put into place. “According to some investigators, approximately 75 billion tons a fertile soil are lost annually from the world’s agricultural systems (Myers 1993).” (Pimentel, Kounang, 1998) Soil loss is a huge factor and many different things can be done to help slow it,
As the amount of available land decreases, vital resources such as food, water, and living space will decrease as well.
As history repeats itself, we continue to notice that there are many geographic factors that effect regions across the world. A few of the most noticeable are monsoons and deserts. Over time these factors have altered the relationships between certain regions and benefitted our development in society. However, they can be extremely demoralizing as well. Not only is nature disrupted but the way in which people live on a daily basis. We are forced to make changes and adapt to the overwhelming geographic factors.
Desertification typically occurs as a result of poor management by human populations. In earlier times of history, desertification was not seen as a widespread issue, because most humans led hunter-gatherer lifestyles that caused them to frequently relocate. Thus, the land was not populated for enough time for it to become overgrazed by livestock or depleted of nutrients by over-farming and deforestation. However, in more recent history, desertification has become much more significant as agriculture-based societies became more widespread and the need to produce as much as many goods as possible overrode the need to conserve Earth’s
This causes the desertification and it also slows down progress for finding areas that can be medicine for certain diseases. Grasslands act as a big sponge, as they are able to absorb the rain that falls throughout the grassland. Because of this, there's fertile land, and abundance of nutrients for migrating wildlife. In south Africa, companies have put non-native trees in the grassland which is taking away nutrients from the area. In the Florida Everglades, they're only about 80 Florida Panthers left. The big problem that I notice is that we are able to make plenty of land for agriculture but not for people. In only three years, farmers in Zambia have created food security for 16,000 farmers. Glaciers are melting all run the world, however the speed of this has went up three times as much in the last 50
The dust bowl covered fields of crops entirely. Since the dust storms started, there was no more crops. There was a severe drought because there was no water and later lot’s of sand came in. Once all that sand came in, it completely covered all the soil for the crops. In present day, I assume that the Great plains is still recovering from the the dust bowl. There was so much sand that it would take a long time for the to return to its original state.
The Dust Bowl, it was the largest man-made ecological disaster in the 1930s. Although some people might argue that human have very little to do with it, or the whole event was nothing but the result of climate change, there are many factors to prove that human activities such as, overgrazing, heavy agricultural machinery, overly expended the grass land for farming, and habitat destruction were the key factors that led to the Dust Bowl. When watching the documentary about the Dust Bowl, one can see that before the Europeans and the farmers took over the land, it was naturally covered with beautiful native plants, such as tall grass and flowers. In the meantime, there were also native species like coyotes, buffalos, and rabbets which were totally controlled in term of numbers. But also, they were there as a
When one think of what can be dangerous, or hostile towards a natural environment, one might think of things like the cutting down of trees, or hunting, or urban development. One thing that is common among all of these, is people. One of the most detrimental factors to any environment, and especially the Mojave Desert of Southern California, is the human being. Humans are responsible for damages caused by off road vehicles, pollution, and industrialization. Each of these contributes to the damage, and destruction of natural desert lands, but off road vehicles is a major contribution.
Warming of the earth, rising sea levels, coastal flooding, receding glaciers, treeless planes and evergreen forests gave way to grasslands, prairies and deserts.
Climate change is a rising issue of importance in our day and age, and one that is threatening our global society on many levels. In the past few decades, scientists have discovered that our planet’s climate has been changing at an alarming rate. The way in which we have changed the land to
The defining character of a desert is usually low levels of rainfall with under 25 cm per year. Additional to that, the relationship between rainfall and the evaporated and transpired water must be taken into consideration. “A desert is a biological community in which most of the indigenous plants and animals are adapted to chronic aridity and periodic, extreme droughts, and in which these conditions are necessary to maintain the community’s structure” (Phillips, Comus, 2000, p. 10). This means that it is the environmental and climatic conditions that have created an evolutionary pressure for the flora to develop.
Humans have been changing the Western forests' fire system since the settlement by the Europeans and now we are experiencing the consequences of those changes. During the summer of 2002, 6.9 million acres of forests was burnt up in the West (Wildland Fires, 1). This figure is two times the ten year annual average, and it does not look like next summer will be any better (Wildfire Season, 1).
Over-exploitation of the environment is caused by deforestation, over-cropping, poor farming practices, and overgrazing. When over-exploitation occurs, salination, erosion, and desertification results, causing less fertility and more hunger across the globe. Salination is caused by erosion that strips the earth of its nutrients, leaving behind salty, unfertile land. This causes plants to have less of a chance of growing properly, or not grow at all. When less plants grow, less people are fed, and more go hungry.
Forests have covered the earth for millions of years, providing habitat and food for animals and humans. These forests have stabilized different ecosystems and have continued the natural cycle that keeps plants and animals in check. The discovery of fire changed all of this. It was the beginning of deforestation, a process that has continued and increased over the last 200,000 years. Humans are the responsible party for the deforestation that has occurred. Humans discovered that animals could be driven with fire. This led to accelerated forest loss due to uncontrolled burning for hunting use (Miller & Tangley 1991: 28). Agriculture was the next problem
Desertification is defined by Scott E Spoolman and G. Miller in their book Living in the Environment as “the conversion of rangeland, rain-fed cropland, or irrigated cropland to desert-like land with a drop of agricultural activity of 10% or more”. To put this as simple as possible desertification is turning usable soil into desert. Dissertation is hard to observe but over time