Question

Land as a resource in 300 words

Answer 1

Land comprises of a bundle of earth materials and vegetation cover. It is a non-renewable resource and central to all primary production systems. The planet earth is a gigantic ecosystem of an area of about 13.4 billion hectares. It is made up of 12 billion natural ecosystems of high biodiversity and 1.48 billion man-made ecosystems of crops designated as agro-ecosystems.

Man has used, overused and abused the land materials in such a way that the land use pattern is detrimental in the long run for the present and future generations. Changes in land cover occurred in two forms – conversion and modification. Conversion is a process that refers to the change of the cover from one class to another such as when forest is cleared for cropland or when cropland is converted into urban settlement or when wetland drainage is used for cultivation of crops.

Modification is a process that refers to an alteration of the existing cover that does not convert it into a different type of cover. Worldwide, cultivation has replaced less productive land uses such as forest wastelands of different kinds. From the dawn of civilization till the present day, land surface has been greatly altered by humankind.