What is surface erosion and what role does it play in moving weathered materials?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: Soil surface erosion occurs when heavy rains cause excess water to flow across the surface, or when high winds blow on bare ground. Water and wind erosion are accelerated when the soil surface is exposed.

The most common form of soil erosion is caused by rainfall. Intense rain sometimes falls faster than soil can absorb it. Water that cannot soak into the ground must run off the surface as overland flow. As it runs off the surface, water picks up soil particles and carries them down the slope. With enough of this overland flow, water can carve channels, the smallest of which are called Rills.

Surface erosion by water is relatively slow in many natural environments where the ground is covered by grass, trees, and other vegetation. But on large parts of Earth's surface, humans have removed vegetation by clearing forests and plowing fields. Once the vegetative ground cover is removed, slow surface erosion can increase, to become Accelerated Erosion. Ground where vegetation has been removed can suffer more surface erosion in a few months than it experienced during the previous several thousand years. Deforestation is a major source of accelerated erosion.