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Types: Land Pollution
Overview
Revered to as soil pollution, land pollution involves the following mechanism:
Deposition of solid waste
Accumulation of non-biodegradable materials
Toxification of chemicals into poisons
Alteration of soil chemical composition (imbalance of chemical equilibrium to soil medium)
By as much, land pollution of this has amass globally, everyday threatening the very foundation and mechanical support of every matter on earth. Statistically, it has been shown that:
loss of 6 million hectares of land per year
loss of 24 billion tons of topsoil per year
loss of minimum 15 million acres prime agricultural land to overuse and mismanagement
desertification of land results in the lost of 16 million per square miles of world's land surface
The causes for such devastation are generally due to 2 (two) forms of malpractices:
Unhealthy soil management methods;
improper tillage of soil in which excessive tillage result in the deterioration of soil structure
non-maintenance of a proper supply of organic matter in the soil from the imbalance composition of the reserves of organic matter especially nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur unplenished supply after cultivation of vegetation, living the soil prone to soil infertility, unable to stabilize the soil physicality which ultimately let to desertification
irregular maintenance of a proper nutrient supply of trace elements gives rise to the use of excessive synthetic fertilizers, which are non biodegradable and accumulate in the soil system which eventually destroys useful organisms such as bacteria, fungi and other organisms
improper maintenance of the correct soil acidity which ultimately disrupt the adaptation of various crops and native vegetation of different soils as the solubility of minerals present will be affected. In a more acidic soil, minerals tend to be more soluble and washed away during rainfall while alkaline soil, minerals are more insoluble which form complex minerals unable to be absorbed into the flora system physiological usage.
Improper irrigation practices;
poorly drained soil result in salt deposits leading to high soil salinity that inhibit plant growth and may lead to crop failure
unirrigated land giving rise to stagnation of agriculture waste products which accumulates and increases land toxicity and also decreasing
irregular irrigation leads to decreasing moisturization of land for soil medium and replenishments of solvents for minerals
Sources and Methods
We can classify major sources that lead to land pollution to the following categories:
Please
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a
comprehensive table explaining
the above major sources.
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©2001, Team C0111040, ThinkQuest.
