Erosion facts for kids
Erosion is a natural process where forces like water, wind, ice, and gravity slowly wear away rocks and soil. It's a big part of how our planet's surface changes over time. Think of it like nature's way of sculpting the land!
The Sun provides most of the energy for erosion. Its energy helps move water and ice in the water cycle. It also creates wind, which can carry away tiny bits of earth.
Erosion can cause problems for people. For example, soil erosion can remove valuable soil from farms. This leaves behind thin or rocky ground, making it hard to grow crops. Erosion can also weaken the ground that supports buildings.
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How Water Causes Erosion
Water is a powerful force that causes erosion. First, weathering breaks down rocks into smaller pieces. This can happen when temperatures change, causing rock pieces to flake off. Also, acid in rainwater can dissolve rocks that contain calcium carbonate.
Once rocks or soil are broken down, water moves them downhill. Waves in oceans or lakes also carry away small pieces of material. A wave washes onto the land and then pulls material back as it flows away.
The size of material water can move depends on how fast it's flowing. A fast-moving stream can carry large rocks. A slow stream might only carry tiny things like clay. Canyons, like the famous Grand Canyon, are huge features created by water erosion over millions of years. When a river reaches the sea, it drops the solid material it carried. This can form a river delta.
Big Rivers and Sediment
Large rivers, especially in tropical areas, carry huge amounts of sediment (like sand and mud) to the sea. The Amazon is a great example. It has the largest drainage basin in the world, covering about 7,050,000 square kilometers (2,720,000 square miles).
The Amazon carries more water than the next seven largest rivers combined! The sediment it carries can stain the sea brown for hundreds of miles.
How Ice Causes Erosion
Ice erosion happens mainly when a glacier moves downhill. As the glacier's ice slowly slides, it pushes and pulls rocks and earth materials along with it. Glaciers are so powerful they can move very large rocks!
Ice can also cause erosion in another way. When water gets into tiny cracks in rocks and then freezes, it expands. This expansion pushes hard against the rock, which can cause the rock to break apart.
How Wind Causes Erosion
Wind erosion happens when wind moves pieces of earth materials. This is generally one of the weakest types of erosion. Wind can roll small pieces of material along the ground. Very small pieces, like dust, can be picked up and carried far away.
Sometimes, wind can carry tiny bits of earth materials over huge distances. For example, some sediment from the Sahara Desert is carried across the Atlantic Ocean by wind. A famous example of severe wind erosion in history is the Dust Bowl. This event caused great damage to farming communities.
How Gravity Causes Erosion
Gravity erosion is the simplest type of erosion. Gravity simply pulls loose rocks and soil downhill. Landslides are dramatic examples of gravity erosion. In a landslide, a large amount of earth material suddenly slides down a slope due to gravity.
Erosion and Earth's Landscape
The Earth's landscape is shaped by two main things: Tectonics and erosion. Tectonics is about how the Earth's surface moves and builds up land, creating mountains. Climate then controls how erosion wears away these high areas over time.
For example, rivers often form because of tectonic uplift, like in the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau. All of the Earth's mountain ranges were created by land moving upwards from changes deep beneath the Earth's surface. When the ground rises, it can even change the local weather, including wind, rainfall, and sea levels. The constant interaction between these two processes forms, changes, or destroys features on the Earth’s surface.
Images for kids
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An actively eroding rill on an intensively-farmed field in eastern Germany
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A natural arch produced by the wind erosion of differentially weathered rock in Jebel Kharaz, Jordan
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A wave-like sea cliff produced by coastal erosion, in Jinshitan Coastal National Geopark, Dalian, Liaoning Province, China
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Soil and water being splashed by the impact of a single raindrop
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A spoil tip covered in rills and gullies due to erosion processes caused by rainfall: Rummu, Estonia
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Dobbingstone Burn, Scotland, showing two different types of erosion affecting the same place. Valley erosion is occurring due to the flow of the stream, and the boulders and stones (and much of the soil) that are lying on the stream's banks are glacial till that was left behind as ice age glaciers flowed over the terrain.
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Layers of chalk exposed by a river eroding through them
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Wave cut platform caused by erosion of cliffs by the sea, at Southerndown in South Wales
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Erosion of the boulder clay (of Pleistocene age) along cliffs of Filey Bay, Yorkshire, England
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The Devil's Nest (Pirunpesä), the deepest ground erosion in Europe, located in Jalasjärvi, Kurikka, Finland
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Glacial moraines above Lake Louise, in Alberta, Canada
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A wadi in Makhtesh Ramon, Israel, showing gravity collapse erosion on its banks
See also
In Spanish: Erosión para niños
