Soil formation takes centuries, making its loss nearly irreparable

Evidence

By the time liverworts have appeared it may be hundreds of years since the first plants took hold on the rocks, and it may be many more hundreds of years before the soil is deep enough for a bush or small tree to find enough soil to grow on. This explains why man’s careless destruction of good soil by fire, ruthless lumbering, or letting his domestic animals overgraze the soil and produce erosion is so dangerous. What man destroys in a year nature may take centuries to repair. — Vinson Brown, Reading the Woods, 230

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The timescale contrast between ecosystem destruction and recovery reframes human landscape impacts.
• XREF: Underpins the disturbance-recovery reasoning at the heart of the field course. — connects to: Slope erosion after fire can prevent forest regrowth for centuries — Vinson Brown, Reading the Woods: Seeing More in…, 411; Slope position within a region shapes soil maturity and depth — Vinson Brown, Reading the Woods: Seeing More in…, 242; Antebellum cotton farming rapidly depleted soil, forcing relentless westward expansion for new land — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 556 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Antebellum cotton farming rapidly depleted soil, forcing relentless westward expansion for new land #exemplifies (0.85) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 556
• Soil exhaustion from careless sugar cultivation devastated whole islands #exemplifies (0.85) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 777
• Groundwater contamination like TCE can persist for thousands of years #expands (0.72) — Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action, 3138