Michelle Chen

April 20, 2015

9:00 PM

Soil Erosion is very common in the Bay Area. Since the Bay Area is known to be a very windy and moist place, soil erosion is very common. It is very common for the wind and water to carry soil from the Bay Area land down into the streams, lakes, and the Bay. In the soil, it is carried with pollutants like oil, grease, chemicals, fertilizers, animal wastes, and bacteria. These pollutants are very threaten to our water quality in the Bay Area.

As soil erosion occurs, nature slow does wear away in land. But construction is a major reason why soil erosion is occurring. This is due to the fact that when we are removing other objects that hold soil in place, we are exposing it to the action of wind and air which increases the chance of soil erosion.

With the soil erosion on construction sites, it results in loss of topsoil, minerals, nutrients, and it also causes ugly cuts in the landscape. It is also possible for surface runoff and materials to carry with clog culverts, flood channels, and streams. It could also destroy wildlife and damage recreational areas all over the Bay Area.

Soil erosion isn’t cheap, it actually costs the home construction industry, local government, and also homeowners of the Bay Area millions of dollars. This is due to the damages to roads and property. This is also an example of where our tax money go towards, it is spent on cleaning out channels, lakes, and the Bay.

Soil erosion is always going to be an ongoing problem in our world. This is just going to continue to grow as a problem because as time continues, the less soil there would be in this world. In the future, this problem is going to be even more severe that I believe we would try to find a solution for it since there isn’t a solution as of right now.

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Jenna Baker

May 17, 2015

9:23pm

Maintaining a healthy soil profile is essential for sustaining agricultural production, and therefore, human survival. Many people don’t realize that soil is an ecosystem; it contains a community of living organisms that have complex interactions with each other. Soil is composed of minerals from ground down rocks, air, water, and organic matter which includes living organisms and plant biomass. The health of this ecosystem has relied on human knowledge, understanding, and responsible practice since people began agriculture roughly 12,000 years ago. The relatively recent industrialization of agriculture has led to a massive loss of fertile farmland due to poor management practices. Current methods such as large scale mono-cropping, pesticide and herbicide use, and the lack of crop rotation, cover-cropping, and low-impact tillage have caused widespread degradation and soil erosion. According to Soil Science Society of America, it takes at least 500 years to form an inch of topsoil. As you can see, soil is a finite and precious resource that we need to take much better care of.

In my research, I tried to find numbers and facts about the percentage of soil that has eroded in Santa Cruz County. Although, I could not identify any hard facts, I found some interesting recommendations for local homeowners. The city of Santa Cruz recommends that people create defensible space around their homes to protect them from fires, and replace flammable plants with other vegetation to avoid soil erosion. While it is important for each person to do their part to protect the soil around their homes, we need to bump these “recommendations” to a much larger scale in order to have a sustainable future.

Large and small-scale farms in the Santa Cruz area need to follow the best management practices regarding healthy soil. Alan Chadwick believed that cultivation is a process toward optimum fertility, and he taught local gardeners fundamental concepts and goals of soil cultivation in the 1970’s. These include increasing pore space for air and water infiltration through aeration, planting cover-crops to protect from soil erosion, appropriate tillage, planting diverse species to add different vitamins & minerals, and making quality compost to add organic matter to the soil. We need to go back to these roots when considering how to cultivate our land in the present, and for our future.

Local farmers and gardeners should have access to education about these sustainable management strategies, and ideally practice them in hands-on workshops. People of Santa Cruz County need to get together to plan educational workshops or write easily accessible, free zines about the importance of soil health and how to properly maintain it. If more people working in soil related fields were knowledgeable about these systems and began practicing them, our region would be actively restoring soil instead of eroding it. Imagine how lush, beautiful and thriving the Santa Cruz area could be!

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