GEOG 1070 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Soil Fertility, Land Degradation, Overgrazing

• School: University of Iowa
• Department: Geography (Geographical and Sustainability Sciences)
• Course: GEOG 1070
• Professor: Eric Tate

Document Summary

Geog 1070: contemporary environment issues lecture 7. Global land cover physical land type. Biomes distinct regions of climate, soil, and forestation. Major types of biomes are forests, grass lands, and desserts. Land degradation is the deterioration of the productive capacity of land: ex. Forest cleaning, cultivating on steep slopes, overgrazing rangelands, excessive fertilizer application. Deforestation clearance of large forest expanses: carved by wildlife, logging, small scale agriculture, pasture, large scale agriculture. Paper takes up 40% of timber and the us citizen averages 50 lbs tissues/year. Deforestation causes floods and droughts, uncontrolled soil erosion, sedimentation, species extinction, decreased soil fertility, desert formation, social conflict, migration, and green house gas emissions. Canada is the world"s biggest timber exporter. The younger trees produce seedlings as they mature. Policy solutions preservation, conservation, traditional shifting cultivation, reforestation (planting trees where they previously were), and afforestation (planting trees in areas that have never been processed.