: What is soil degradation and what are the factors responsible for it?
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Organic matter compresses, dissolves, is absorbed or just washes/leaches away.
If you put a foot compost on a piece of land, by next year you will only have about six inches, one inch in 5 or six years and in 10 years won’t have any of it left.
Organic matter retains moisture which plants need as much as the minerals and organic bits they need.
plants grow and die and their bodies replace the organic matter they used up. Its not all vegetation, when they studied Mt St Helens that blew up 25 years ago they noticed that crevases in the raw dirt would get a drift of bugs that flew over, found nothing to eat and died. That was the start of nutrition for the wild seeds that also was carried by the wind.
Other factors include mechanical disruption, compression. over working the soil with tillers destroys the structure of the dirt allowing water to escape much easier (motorcycles on the desert, people walking across a lawn wearing a path) and heavy machinery can compress the soil even deep down, also damages roots of trees which is why construction of a house usually starts with the cutting down of the 100 year old oaks, they’ll die anyway.
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