Soil management and water erosion: a literature review

uma revisão bibliográfica

Abstract

Soil degradation is not recent and has been intensifying with the increasingly intensive use of natural resources. Among the factors that contribute to its degradation, in Brazil, water erosion stands out and, to a large extent, it is linked to agricultural activities. Among such activities, those linked to conventional soil management are highlighted, which, in short, cover the list of aspects such as: the unprotected soil, the history of use, the rainfall regime and specific characteristics of the area, contributing to the intensification of erosion. In a movement opposed to this conventional management model, agroecology as a science, practice, and social movement, seeks a reconciliation between agriculture and nature and aims to focus on complex agrosystems in which the multiple interactions of its components in the search for mechanisms that enable production systems capable of subsidizing the fertility of the soil, its productivity, and the health of crops, embedded in a concern with the maintenance of life in the soil. Therefore, this work reflects on the differences that involve the impacts of conventional and agroecological agriculture on the dynamics of the erosion processes. So, a bibliographical review was carried out on the genesis of the soil, the erosion processes, and the ways of using the soil in the conventional and agroecological models.