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Science 11 June 2004:
Vol. 304. no. 5677, pp. 1614 - 1615
DOI: 10.1126/science.304.5677.1614
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Soil and Trouble

When people intensively till fields and clear-cut forests, they can damage or destroy topsoil that took centuries to accumulate. Just how vulnerable soils are depends on underlying conditions. Mismanaged soils in windswept lands can easily turn into desert, for example, and saline soils can become salt-encrusted wastelands.

This map shows the main barriers to productive farming, along with erosion risk, derived from climatic and soil conditions. Overlaid as cross-hatching are regions reported to be highly or very highly degraded according to a global survey of soil experts published in 1990. The hot spots illustrate examples of the worst soil degradation, from the most common physical type--water erosion--to chemical forms, such as that caused by pollution from industrial chemicals and war.


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)