Erosion—Soil on the Move Lowerlevel 02

You run into the house screaming, “We won! We won the game!” Your mother just laughs and shakes her head as she looks at your uniform. “That’s fantastic,” she said, “but you could’ve left some of that dirt at the ball field.” You look down at the front of your uniform. It is covered in dirt from when you slid into third base.

At the moment, your mother does not see much use for dirt, especially when it is on your clothes. The term dirt refers to any substance that covers a surface. What you actually have covering your baseball uniform is soil. Soil is made up of small pieces of rock or decomposed plants and animals that have broken down over hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Soil is an extremely important resource because of this mixture of materials. Although at the moment, your mother would not agree.

Life may not exist on Earth if not for that very thin layer of soil that covers our planet. Soil, just like air and water, is an important resource that must be protected. We grow our food in soil. Soil also supports other crops, such as cotton. While we don’t eat cotton, it provides the material for the clothes we wear. We build our homes from wood harvested from trees that grow in the soil. Soil seems to be everywhere. It appears that we have a lot of it to spare. So why do we need to protect it?