Soil Conservation Techniques and Sustainable Land Management
摘要
Land is one of the most valuable resources and the foundation of human civilization. Although the terms “soil” and “land” are often used synonymously, “soil” is typically used to describe the medium, while “land” indicates the resource. Nowadays, owing to the population pressure, deforestation, intensive farming with injudicious use of agrochemicals, climate change, and improper land use patterns, productive land is getting degraded. According to the UNEP report, more than 25% of global land has been degraded, and around 40% of global agricultural land has been seriously degraded, posing a threat to the well-being of 3.2 billion people globally. If current trends continue, 95% of the land area could become degraded within the next 30 years. In this context, soil conservation techniques play a pivotal role in sustainable land management by mitigating soil degradation and enhancing environmental resilience. Therefore, soil conservation through cultural (e.g., carbon farming, conservation agriculture, organic farming, integrated nutrient management), mechanical (e.g., construction of artificial structure), and chemical (e.g., amelioration of chemically degraded soil) methods holds paramount importance in this contemporary situation to protect our soil health, biodiversity, and sustainable production system. The main aim of soil conservation is to protect the fertile soil from erosion, and to cease the depletion of soil organic carbon, desertification, soil acidification, salinization, etc. In this chapter, different advanced soil conservation techniques based on the multidisciplinary approach and ongoing research have been identified in relation to the anthropogenic and natural causes of soil/land degradation in the climate change scenario.