Causes of Degradation of Ecosystem Due to Agriculture
Degradation of the ecosystem due to agriculture can be on the following accounts:
a) Removal of trees (deforestation) and clearing the land for agriculture destroy the habitats of many kinds of living organisms. Deforestation ultimately leads to problems like soil erosion, loss of nutrients and desertification.
b) Cultivating the land intensely without proper soil management, leads to problems like soil erosion, desertification, and depletion of plant nutrients.
c) Irrigation without sufficient drainage leads to excessive accumulation of water (water- logging) or salts (salinisation), rise in water table in the soil, ultimately leading to the degradation of the quality of soil.
d) Indiscriminate use of agrochemicals-fertilisers and pesticides leads to their increased build up, often reaching harmful levels in the soil and the underground water resources. This causes their bioaccumulation in the food chain. Not only has that, these chemicals often degraded the quality of soil and ultimately the ecosystem.