What is erosion? Detailed answer

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What is erosion? Detailed answer

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What is erosion?

Erosion is the process by which the surface of the earth is slowly erased. Rain falls on soft soil and carries thick streams of mud into rivers and streams. The wind that collects the earth from the fields drives sand and dust. Whirling streams along the banks of rivers and lakes, waves hitting the shore wash out the clay shores. They gnaw sand and stones from rocky cliffs, turning rocks into sand and grinding it into even smaller pieces. Then all this is taken out by water into the sea.

This is erosion. To her we owe the appearance of some of the wonders of the world, such as the Grand Canyon in Arizona. But erosion also has a negative side. In the late 30s, it turned the fertile plains of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas to dust, leaving thousands homeless.

Water is the main culprit of erosion in the world. It seeps into cracks in solid rocks and, as it freezes, tears the rocks to pieces. After many years of such exposure, the rock turns into soil, and then the soil is washed away. Rain soaks into the soil until it is sufficiently wet. The remaining water flows over the surface, first in the form of streams, and then collected in rivers. It always carries the soil with it in the form of dirt. Streams slowly, over many millennia, break through the valleys through which they flow. The valleys widen and meet. The forces of erosion erase the earth sometimes to sea level. Wind also helps erosion, but it acts much more slowly than water. In ancient times, glaciers also contributed to erosion, which erased the edges of the valleys. America's agriculture has been hit hard by erosion.

Farmers didn't realize that precious topsoil was being carried away, or didn't know how to stop it. They plowed the earth deeply, and the subsoil layer came to the surface, which quickly turned into dust and was blown away by the wind.

Today, new agricultural practices are helping to prevent losses from erosion. On the one hand, farmers no longer use the plow on such a scale. They leave wheat and corn stalks in the soil, which helps hold the ground. In rough terrain, they work the areas along the slopes, instead of plowing them from top to bottom. This is called contour plowing and leaves no furrows for water to run off the slope.

Today, farmers have mastered many ways to save precious land and keep it from being carried away by water and wind.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

Do all cats purr?

When something smells delicious or you just feel good, you sometimes hum rather: "Mmmm! .." When the cat wants to express its pleasure, it purrs. The purring sound is produced by the vibration of the vocal cords. The cat draws air into the lungs, and it passes through the vocal cords along the way.

Thus, if desired, the cat can allow the vocal cords to vibrate with air pressure. When a cat doesn't want to purr, she doesn't use her vocal cords - and no purring! Of course, when we talk about a cat, we usually mean a domestic cat. But there are still many members in the cat family. Did you know that the tiger, lion, leopard, jaguar, coguar, ocelot, and lynx also belong to the cat family? As for the reproduction of various sounds, a domestic cat, in addition to purring, can also meow, howl and yell.

Other types of cats make different sounds. Lion and tiger can roar. Jaguar and leopard make a sound similar to a loud cough or bark. But the most interesting thing is that due to the different structure of some of the bones of the throat, neither a lion, nor a tiger, nor a jaguar, nor a leopard can meow! But all cats, regardless of their size, have the same body proportions. If you enlarge the photo of a cat to a large format, you will see that it is very similar to a tiger.

Test your knowledge! Did you know...

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Random news from the Archive

Dehydrated mosquitoes bite more often 28.05.2019

Mosquitoes are the most merciless creatures, carriers of diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. Only females, who need to obtain protein for egg maturation, bite. But blood can also serve as a "refreshing" drink on a hot and dry day.

New research has shown that dehydrated mosquitoes are more aggressive; pounce on the body of the host more often and feed more intensively than those that have ready access to water. In an effort to quench their thirst, mosquitoes also increase the risk of spreading disease, says Joshua Benoit, a biologist at the University of Cincinnati.

Because some species of mosquitoes lay their eggs on water, researchers have long assumed that wetter conditions help mosquitoes carry serious diseases. However, recent research work has suggested otherwise, linking increased disease transmission, such as West Nile fever, to drought. Opening team Dr. Bennoit helps explain these paradoxical findings.

Scientists became interested in the effect of dehydration on the behavior of the occasional mosquito: a worker dropped a container of dehydrated mosquitoes and saw them attack him with much more energy than usual.

The researchers studied three mosquito species that carry yellow fever, Zika virus or West Nile fever. They exposed hundreds of insects to varying temperatures and humidity levels in cages with or without access to water and nectar (the mosquitoes' preferred source of sugars).

Then they observed the behavior of the mosquitoes and recorded the frequency of their attacks on the "master": the "host" was a warm, waxy plastic membrane covered with artificial sweat and filled with chicken blood.

During the observation, it was noted that within a few hours, up to 30 percent of dehydrated mosquitoes fed on the blood of their host - compared with 5 to 10 percent of those who could drink water. "Even short periods of dehydration can have significant consequences," says Benoit.

These "very interesting" findings have real implications in predicting disease transmission rates," says Chloe Lahondere, an entomologist at the Institute of Technology, Virginia, who was not involved in the study. about their biology.

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