Urban development has come with a lot of environmental concerns. Various anthropogenic coupled with other processes predisposes the urban environment to soil erosion and other long term impacts. The section of the report discusses a few of these concerns.
- Deforestation and Degradation
Forestry and plants act as a natural barrier to slow the surface runoff, anchoring the soil with their root systems. Deforestation and degradation (e.g., logging, burning forests, agriculture and livestock farming) remove the forest canopy and vegetation covering, which causes the topsoil to erode more quickly, resulting in widespread erosion. In this case, plants are difficult to grow in the less nutritious remained by soil, forming a vicious circle, and causing more severe erosion issues.
- Construction Activities/Expansion of Transportation Networks
Similarly, with the rapid development and urbanization, construction activities are significantly increased. These construction usually initiates soil detachment with is a fundamental catalyze for soil erosion. To addresses these soil erosion problems , engineers have over the years focus on civil engineering techniques which in many case turns to be very expansive and has other long term environmental impacts on the landscapes. This quite unfortunate that some engineer don’t give much considerations to erosion during project planing and implementation.
Roads Construction (posted by Snr. László Szalai)
- Climate Change and Storm Water .
The is enough evidences that the jet propelling climate and environmental change is one of the critical problems.Increase is global temperature is expected to have a direct impact on the soil processes. Other climate change scenarios predicts high rainfall and storm. This events coupled with the high impervious nature of the urban areas make it very susceptible to serious erosion . The low infiltration rates increases surface flows and other facilitators of soil erosion. The uncertainty of climate change and the resource demand of the fast growing population of enormous concern in handling soil erosion problems in the future.
If you want to know more about the mechanism of soil erosion, please click the Mechanism