Soil erosion effects on soil productivity: A research perspective

Excerpt

ACCURATE estimates of future soil productivity are essential to make agricultural policy decisions and to plan the use of land from the field scale to the national level. Soil productivity is the capacity of a soil, in its normal environment, to produce a particular plant or sequence of plants under a specified management system (96). Because of the emphasis on a soil's capacity to produce crops, productivity should be expressed in terms of yields.

Soil erosion depletes soil productivity, but the relationship between erosion and productivity is not well defined (63, 67, 80, 83, 99, 100). Until the relationship is adequately developed, selecting management strategies to maximize long-term crop production will be impossible. Poor decisions can easily result in serious damage to soil resources; productivity may approach zero in many severely eroded areas of the United States (10, 11, 12, 15, 43, 52, 53, 60, 89, 117). Poor decisions can also result in under use of soil resources and loss of income to the producer and food and fiber supply to the consumer.

Although limited research has been devoted to the soil erosion-soil productivity problem specifically, considerable effort has gone into most of the important processes …