Test Your Knowledge of Natural Erosion Processes with This Informative Quiz

Natural Processes that Remove Soil and Rock:

• Erosion is the process of removing soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust and transporting it to another location where it is deposited.

• Agents of erosion include rainfall; bedrock wear in rivers; coastal erosion by the sea and waves; glacial plucking, abrasion, and scour; areal flooding; wind abrasion; groundwater processes; and mass movement processes in steep landscapes like landslides and debris flows.

• Human activities have increased the rate at which soil erosion is occurring globally by 10-40 times.

• Excessive erosion leads to decreases in agricultural productivity and ecological collapse, and sedimentation of waterways and eutrophication of water bodies, as well as sediment-related damage to roads and houses.

• Water and wind erosion are the two primary causes of land degradation, responsible for about 84% of the global extent of degraded land.

• Rainfall produces four main types of soil erosion: splash erosion, sheet erosion, rill erosion, and gully erosion.

• Valley or stream erosion occurs with continued water flow along a linear feature, and bank erosion is the wearing away of the banks of a stream or river.

• Shoreline erosion primarily occurs through the action of currents and waves, with hydraulic action, wave pounding, abrasion, corrosion, and bioerosion being the main processes.

• Chemical erosion is the loss of matter in a landscape in the form of solutes, and glaciers erode predominantly by three different processes: abrasion/scouring, plucking, and ice thrusting.

• Wind erosion is a major geomorphological force, especially in arid and semi-arid regions, and a major source of land degradation, evaporation, desertification, harmful airborne dust, and crop damage.Erosion and Mass Wasting: An Overview

• Erosion can be of two primary types: deflation and abrasion.

• Deflation is divided into three categories: surface creep, saltation, and suspension.

• Wind erosion is much more severe in arid areas and during times of drought.

• Mass wasting is the downward and outward movement of rock and sediments on a sloped surface, mainly due to the force of gravity.

• Mass-wasting processes are always occurring continuously on all slopes.

• Submarine sediment gravity flows can result in erosion of the ocean floor to create channels and submarine canyons.

• Climate, vegetative cover, topography, and tectonics are the primary factors affecting erosion rates.

• Human land development, in forms including agricultural and urban development, is considered a significant factor in erosion and sediment transport.

• Mountain ranges can take many millions of years to erode to the degree they effectively cease to exist.

• If the rate of erosion is higher than the rate of soil formation, the soils are being destroyed by erosion.

• Excessive erosion causes both "on-site" and "off-site" problems.

• Water and wind erosion are the two primary causes of land degradation.