Soil Conservation

To combat erosion, various strategies can be used:  

Agronomic measures:  

• Maintain plant cover (e.g., mulching crop residues, cover crops, intercropping).  
• Management: adopt soil management practices that reduce soil erodibility and increase infiltration capacity (e.g., contour tillage, increasing soil organic matter, no-till), reduce slope length of arable fields by including vegetation strips (e.g., hedges, grass-strips, grassed waterways). 
• Structural: alter terrain to slow water flow (e.g., terracing). 

Forestry practices: 

• Replace clear-cutting with methods such as strip logging or continuous cover forestry. 
• Where possible, schedule logging operations when the soil is frozen. 
• Plan (temporary) forest roads optimally to limit soil erosion alongside them. 

Urbanisation: 

In urban areas and for other infrastructure, it is important to manage generated surface water locally. This can be achieved by: 

• Using green roofs and rain beds 
• Installing retention buffers in urban areas 
• Implementing drainage systems to divert the surplus surface water