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Soil Erosion
Going Green
Going Green: Soil Erosion
Soil erosion from rain and wind produces water quality issues in streams, rivers and lakes, degrades soil quality, and affects human health. Sediment in and of itself suffocates a lot of aquatic habitat but it also acts as a magnet to carry other things that aren't very good for our water environment.
"A lot of people have a tendency to think dirt's dirt. The problem is that we have all different kinds of soils, in fact as we learned today in class there's over 444 different soils in New York State alone. There are all different combinations of organic contents, silt, clay, sand, and gravel. They're all not going to behave the same way. They all don't erode the same. Silt and clay particles have a lot of surface area, which act like magnets to collect pathogens, nutrients, and toxics and carry them into the receiving water body," said Donald Lake, watershed management and soil erosion specialist.
Donald Lake conducts workshops on soil erosion prevention and watershed management for landscape architects, engineers, town and city planners, developers, code enforcement officers, and so on. His goal is to prevent soil erosion rather than have to clean up the mess it makes.
How to operate and use the appropriate practices for the appropriate site, in other words good implementation trying to keep the soil in place, control the runoff and prevent offsite resources from being damaged with sediment damaged and degrade the water quality.
As you think about the infrastructure in and around buildings, oftentimes we'll create a halo of compacted fill, which means you make it tighter with all the construction equipment that's on it for a long period of time. It would be best to aerate it to re-establish its permeability, its ability to absorb and infiltrate the water into the groundwater.
So water seeps down into the soil and doesn't runoff carrying soil with it.
