[stemmer]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/348200_dirt22.html

Quote:

The lowdown on dirt: It's disappearing
Disappearing dirt rivals global warming as an environmental threat
By TOM PAULSON
P-I REPORTER

The planet is getting skinned.

While many worry about the potential consequences of atmospheric warming, a few experts are trying to call attention to another global crisis quietly taking place under our feet.

Call it the thin brown line. Dirt. On average, the planet is covered with little more than 3 feet of topsoil -- the shallow skin of nutrient-rich matter that sustains most of our food and appears to play a critical role in supporting life on Earth.

"We're losing more and more of it every day," said David Montgomery, a geologist at the University of Washington. "The estimate is that we are now losing about 1 percent of our topsoil every year to erosion, most of this caused by agriculture."

"It's just crazy," fumed John Aeschliman, a fifth-generation farmer who grows wheat and other grains on the Palouse near the tiny town of Almota, just west of Pullman.

"We're tearing up the soil and watching tons of it wash away every year," Aeschliman said. He's one of a growing number of farmers trying to persuade others to adopt "no-till" methods, which involve not tilling the land between plantings, leaving crop stubble to reduce erosion and planting new seeds between the stubble rows.

Montgomery has written a popular book, "Dirt," to call public attention to what he believes is a neglected environmental catastrophe. A geomorphologist who studies how landscapes form, Montgomery describes modern agricultural practices as "soil mining" to emphasize that we are rapidly outstripping the Earth's natural rate of restoring topsoil.

"Globally, it's clear we are eroding soils at a rate much faster than they can form," said John Reganold, a soils scientist at Washington State University. "It's hard to get people to pay much attention to this because, frankly, most of us take soil for granted."

The National Academy of Sciences has determined that cropland in the U.S. is being eroded at least 10 times faster than the time it takes for lost soil to be replaced.

The United Nations has warned of worldwide soil degradation -- especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where soil loss has contributed to the rapidly increasing number of malnourished people....

..."Globally, it's pretty clear we're running out of dirt," Montgomery said.

Ron Myhrum, state soil scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's office in Spokane, agreed that global soil loss is a huge problem. ...

"We don't have the kind of dust storms here we used to have," Myhrum said. ...

That is indeed another way to lose soil -- paving it over. Judy Herring, manager of King County's farmland preservation program, said the county has lost 60 percent of its farmland since the 1960s. In 1979, Herring said, voters approved a bond program that buys back farmland to protect it from development (and has done this for 13,200 acres so far).

Science fact or more scare mongering?

[Canadian_Mind]

I'd say scare mongering. In Carstairs, Alberta, some of the farmers would actually dig up their top soil and sell it as garden soil. There is always more minerals and nutrients underneath, and when there wasn't they'd use a bit of fertilizer, usually consisting of cow manure.

[ziggy]

Well,it has to go somewhere.
It actually drifts like snow,when I used to strip right of ways in Alberta the soil in some places was only 1/4 inch thick.

Mother natures way of leveling things out.

[ziggy]

Canadian_Mind wrote:

I'd say scare mongering. In Carstairs, Alberta, some of the farmers would actually dig up their top soil and sell it as garden soil. There is always more minerals and nutrients underneath, and when there wasn't they'd use a bit of fertilizer, usually consisting of cow manure.

You have your "A" and "B" soil and sometimes a white mineral soil up their.Once your down to clay though nothing will grow on it.

[ziggy]

I know this,when building lease sites,roads and pipeline right of ways in Alberta the soil is worth its wieght in gold,it's seperated and put aside along with any grass stubble.Sometimes white mineral soil is present and looks like clay and would fool most dirt experts.After stripping they test the soils for clay content,if it's bad you start walking and looking for another job.They take their soil preservation very serious here.I've seen jobs shut down because the wind was blowing away the stripped soil.

Once the soil is gone and just clay is there nothing can grow so no soil is ever put back unless in a severe dust storm.When stripping farmers fields I notice the fence lines all have twice the soil depth as the cultivated field,it's been undisturbed for many years so shows a good cross section of what happened(sedimentarily speaking). So farming takes a huge toll on the soil also.

The article has some merit but in no way is it a crisis.

[ziggy]

Here's how precious soil is in Alberta.Stripped and not stripped. The other way to build a road without disturbing native soil and grasses.

[BartSimpson]

Global warming didn't exactly pan out as a disaster so the Chicken Littles are already fomenting the next "crisis".

[ziggy]

BartSimpson wrote:

Global warming didn't exactly pan out as a disaster so the Chicken Littles are already fomenting the next "crisis".

We were up on the soil problem years ago in Alberta,we dont have much to lose.

[sandorski]

BartSimpson wrote:

Global warming didn't exactly pan out as a disaster so the Chicken Littles are already fomenting the next "crisis".

It's "panning" out, it's just a slow moving disaster that will have dramatic events here and there. This Top Soil situation is just more evidence of our unsustainable ways.

[ziggy]

sandorski wrote:

BartSimpson wrote:

Global warming didn't exactly pan out as a disaster so the Chicken Littles are already fomenting the next "crisis".

It's "panning" out, it's just a slow moving disaster that will have dramatic events here and there. This Top Soil situation is just more evidence of our unsustainable ways.

So we just all go kill ourselves then or what?

I think we have a better handle on drifting topsoil now than 30 years ago.

[BartSimpson]

ziggy wrote:

So we just all go kill ourselves then or what?

I say we reduce humanity's impact on the earth by asking the environmentalists to "act locally" and collectively commit suicide to demonstrate to the rest of us just how serious they are about saving the earth.

[sasquatch2]

Ziggy

Quote:

Once the soil is gone and just clay is there nothing can grow so no soil is ever put back unless in a severe dust storm.When stripping farmers fields I notice the fence lines all have twice the soil depth as the cultivated field, it's been undisturbed for many years so shows a good cross section of what happened(rudimentarily speaking). So farming takes a huge toll on the soil also

.

Actually fence lines do not reflect the original soil profile. The vegetation of the fence bottom catches a lot of wind driven loess(silt) and mechanical farming frequently "hills" fence bottoms up. The elevated fence bottom, enjoys excellent drainage and permits root penetration from the sides as well the top.

Got a neighbour, who makes a very good living stripping subdivisions. He uses pull scrapers and IH quads for speed---he parked the cats and was one of the first large scale adopters of Cat Challengers.

No till farming has been with us for sometime.

Much of the soil loss problem in the third world is linked to deforestation and bad husbandry.

In the amazon the soil is thin and not very fertile and prone to erosion. Rainforest soil being thick and fertile is a myth. Farming can produce soil faster than nature just by cropping. There is a rule of thumb---there is as much below ground as above. Crops like beans wear the soil out while wheat and corn replenish organic matter rapidly....the key factor is organic matter. Believe it or not a crop of winter wheat produces too much organic matter if you attempt to incorporate the straw. Water won't penetrate.......

The original prairie soil was very thin. Current cropping practice does not involve moldboard plows and the crop residue is chopped and spread to shelter the ground and prevent moisture loss.

Poor cultural practices such as summer fallow are a recipe for erosion. It dissipates the organic matter.

[dino_bobba_renno]

Well I for one think that Canada should sign onto Soiloto. I've all ready got Gore on the line and we're planing for a movie release date some time later this summer.

[sandorski]

ziggy wrote:

sandorski wrote:

BartSimpson wrote:

Global warming didn't exactly pan out as a disaster so the Chicken Littles are already fomenting the next "crisis".

It's "panning" out, it's just a slow moving disaster that will have dramatic events here and there. This Top Soil situation is just more evidence of our unsustainable ways.

So we just all go kill ourselves then or what?

I think we have a better handle on drifting topsoil now than 30 years ago.

Why?

It's not that the issue can't be fixed and it's not that we can't continue our lifestyle similar to what it is now, but we need to make changes to do so. We just have to deal with it is all, just like we have to deal with GW.

[sasquatch2]

We are dealing with it. Soil conservation has been practiced in NA for decades.

We have all manner of folk out in the 3rd world teaching soil onservation......and then we have the GW nutters out there encouraging soybean production for bio-fuel----- destroying the rain forest as well as the 3rd world's farm land.