1. Human Activities affect Soil
Soil is a resource that you can’t live without. Whether its supplying you with food, oxygen, or clean water. It sustains life!

2. Human Activities affect Soil
Activities that affect soil resources are:
Farming
Construction and development
Mining

3. Farming
Farming is how humans have received their food for over 10,000 years.
Farmers often add nutrients to their soils in the form or organic or artificial fertilizers to make crops grow better.

4. Farming Over time farming practices can lead to the loss of soil.
Such as when farmers clear land
American farmers lose about 5 metric tons of soil for every ton of grain they produce.

5. Farming
Overgrazing can also occur, which is when farm animals eat large amounts of land cover.
Just like when farmers clear trees, this prevents the soil to wash or blow away.
This can cause desertification

6. Construction and Development
To make various buildings and sites people need to dig up soil.
A lot of this can cause the soil to wash or be blown away which can cause rivers and lakes to become muddy.

7. Construction and Development
The affects can lead to flooding or can fill up lakes and reservoirs.

8. Mining
Certain methods of mining can also cause soil loss.

9. Mining
Strip mining and open pit mining involves the removal of plants.
This can cause more exposure to air and water, which can speed up the process of chemical weathering

10. Mining
The speed up of chemical weathering can cause a type of pollution called acid drainage.
This acid can seep into the soil and be harmful to plants trying to grow.

11. Human Activities affect Soil
Soil is so important to not only humans but the world. So its important that we conserve our soil.

12. Human Activities affect Soil
There are 5 methods for soil conservation
Crop Rotation
Conservation Tillage
Terraces
Contour Plowing
Windbreaks

13. Crop Rotation
Crop Rotation is the practice of planting different crops on the same field in different years or growing seasons.

14. Crop Rotation
As you move your crops the harvest will remove different nutrients from the soil, thus not depleting the soil.

15. Conservation Tillage
Conservation Tillage includes the way farmers limit the number of times fields are tilled or plowed in a year.
The less the soil is disturbed the less likely it will be blown or washed away.

16. Terraces
Terracing are fields that are set up as flat step like areas built on a hillside to hold rainwater and prevent it from running downhill.
Crops are planted on the flat tops of the terraces.

17. Contour Plowing
Contour plowing is plowing on the curves of slopes. It helps so that rainwater does not run straight downhill.

18. Windbreaks
Windbreaks are rows of trees planted between fields to “break” or reduce the number of force winds that can carry off soil.