What is land pollution? State two factors due to which it occurs.
Answers
Answer:
Land pollution is a result of dumping garbage, waste, and other toxins making the land contaminated or polluted. The factors of land pollution comes from the human element such as littering, and waste that is washed ashore from boats, oil rigs, and sewage outlets.
Explanation:
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Answer:
Land pollution is a major problem around the world and is caused by a variety of factors. Some of main causes of soil pollution include deforestation and consequent erosion, agriculture, industry, mining, landfills and illegal dumping of waste as well as urbanization and construction.
Explanation:
Land pollution is a major problem around the world and is caused by a variety of factors. Some of main causes of soil pollution include deforestation and consequent erosion, agriculture, industry, mining, landfills and illegal dumping of waste as well as urbanization and construction [8].
Let’s have a look at these activities in detail to see how exactly pollution of land resources happens when they take place.
Deforestation
In the Amazon rain forest in Brazil, an area the size of a football field is clear-cut by loggers every second [9]. The removal of plant cover not only eliminates wildlife habitats and food for wildlife, but it also degrades the soil by leaving it barren and without the roots of plants to hold it in place, vulnerable to erosion.
Obviously, a rain forest gets a lot of rain, heavy rain and without a forest canopy to buffer the downpours and without ground cover to hold the soil intact, the rich soil of the forest floor is easily washed away. Along with the topsoil go the nutrients necessary to regenerate growth.
It is estimated that eighty percent of land animals and plants live in forests. Removal of even a portion of the canopy changes the environment of the forest as the canopy blocks the harmful sunlight and keeps in heat at night. Many species cannot adapt to these severe changes in temperature and many species do not survive the destruction of their habitats [10].
Loggers are not the only ones responsible for the rapid deforestation of the earth. Land developers capitalizing on urban sprawl cut down forests, as does the agricultural industry in order to increase the amount of land for growing crops.
In fact, agriculture has been found to be the direct cause if 80 percent of deforestation worldwide [11]. Much of this agricultural land is required to grow crops for animal feed, primarily cattle for the beef industry. The land is also used for cattle grazing [12].
Agriculture
The world population increase and increased demand for a food supply is causing forests and grasslands to be converted to farmland. Natural vegetation has deep roots that hold the soil in its place. Many of the replacement plants, like cotton, coffee, wheat and soybeans do not have deep roots and allow soil erosion. This means that flooding is worsened as the land no longer has the ability to absorb excess rainfall [13]. It also allows for easy runoff of fertilizers and other applied chemicals.
Farmers routinely apply highly toxic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and insecticides directly on to the crops and land. What is not sprayed or directly drift on to the land, enters the soil through the plant’s roots and via the carcasses of the target insects and organisms and debris of the dead weeds. The contamination destroys the healthy organisms responsible for generating new vegetative growth.
It can also renter the soil through rainwater.
A 2010 study of the agriculture herbicide atrazine revealed that of the 36 million kilograms applied annually, 225,000 kilograms washed back to earth in the rain, sometimes 1,000 miles from the source.
The change in chemical composition of streams and rivers from this chemical runoff upsets the natural balance of life causing other, often foreseeable but unanticipated problems. The damage wrought from fertilizer runoff from agriculture is well-documented. It brings excess nitrogen to the water environment, creates algal blooms and consequent dead zones in the water where nothing can live.
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