Our country is one of the countries with the most severe soil erosion in the world. Due to the special natural geography and socioeconomic conditions, soil erosion has become a major environmental problem. my country's water and soil erosion has a wide distribution range and a large area. According to the results of the second national remote sensing survey, China's water and soil erosion area reaches 3.56 million square kilometers, accounting for 37% of the total land area, of which hydraulic erosion area reaches 1.65 million square kilometers. , the wind erosion area is 1.91 million square kilometers. Among the areas of water erosion and wind erosion, the intertwined area of ??water erosion and wind erosion is 260,000 square kilometers. The forms of erosion are diverse and complex. Gravity erosion such as water erosion, wind erosion, freeze-thaw erosion, landslides and debris flows have different characteristics, are intertwined with each other, and have complex causes. Soil loss is serious. According to statistics, the total amount of soil lost in China every year reaches 5 billion tons. The total annual soil loss in the Yangtze River Basin is 2.4 billion tons, of which the total annual soil loss in the upper reaches reaches 1.56 billion tons, and as much as 1.6 billion tons of sediment enters the Yellow River in the Yellow River Basin and Loess Plateau every year.
The causes of soil erosion include natural causes and man-made causes. Natural causes are mainly caused by factors such as landform, climate, soil (ground composition), vegetation, etc. Man-made causes mainly refer to unreasonable production and construction activities that accelerate the destruction and movement of surface soil, as well as other man-made activities, such as wars. Production and construction activities that cause water and soil erosion mainly include land reclamation on steep slopes, unreasonable forest logging, overgrazing on grasslands, mining, road construction, quarrying, etc.