Humans erode soil 100 times faster than nature

https://www.llnl.gov/news/humans-erode-soil-100-times-faster-nature

Anne M Stark
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Jan. 16, 2015

Humans’ use of land, whether for farming or development, has eroded soil 100 times faster than nature working on its own.

According to new research in the journal Geology, researchers found that European colonization and agriculture use in North America in the late 1800s and early 1900s caused as much erosion of the landscape over just a few decades' time as would naturally have taken thousands of years.

The team studied the Roanoke, Savannah and Chattahoochee rivers along with seven other large river basins in the U.S. Southeast, and found, for the first time, a precise quantification of this background rate of erosion. The scientists discovered the rates of hillslope erosion before European settlement were about an inch every 2,500 years; during the period of peak land disturbance in the late 1800s and early 1900s, rates spiked to an inch every 25 years.

•••••