Geography: causes of land degradation
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- Climate change
- Deforestation
- Population increase
- Increasingly frequent droughts and bushfires, along with variation in rainfall patterns are the impacts of climate change in this region. This can lead to crop failure, livestock death, malnutrition, starvation and death.
- Overgrazing
- Trees are cut as demand for wood increases to build or expand settlements. Roots that bind soil together are lost, this means less water storage, the soil dries out, it becomes vulnerable to wind and water erosion.
- Over cultivation
- More people puts more pressure on the fragile land to provide. Desertification has caused people to migrate into towns and cities leading to more urbanisation.
- Overuse of irrigation
- Livestock animals compact the soil by trampling on it. They also eat the vegetation meaning the land is vulnerable to erosion. Combined this leads to infertility.
- Soils are depleted of certain nutrients as the same crops are grown in the same areas year on year (monocultures). Fallow periods (when nothing is grown on the land to allow it to recover) are becoming shorter due to food pressures.
- Watering plants by irrigation is good in the short term, however, as plants soak up the water the concentration of salts in the soil increases. This increased salinity leads to degradation.
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