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HILR - Human Impact on Land Resources Module Overview

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Human Impact on Land Resources Overview

More People, More Problems

Many people think that Earth is so large that human activities couldn't possibly be making much of an impact on the planet. But human populations have expanded at a more than exponential rate, and it is human ingenuity from advances in farming that has kept so many people alive. Human access and land transformation alter ecosystems and bring in pollution and invasive species, which decrease biodiversity. 

Module Lessons Preview

In this module, we will study the following topics:

Land Pollution

Impact of Agriculture

Soil Erosion

Key Terms

  • Agriculture - the science or practice of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products
  • Anthropogenic - originating in human activity
  • Deforestation - the action of clearing a wide area of trees
  • Desertification - the process by which fertile land becomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or inappropriate agriculture
  • Green Revolution - a large increase in crop production in developing countries achieved by the use of fertilizers, pesticides, and high-yield crop varieties
  • Irrigation is the application of controlled amounts of water to plants at needed intervals.
  • High Yield Crops - are ones that produces large quantities of grain, corn, etc
  • Land pollution - destruction of the earth's land surfaces, often directly or indirectly as a result of man's activities and their misuse of land resources
  • Leachate - water that has percolated through a solid and leached out some of the constituents
  • Multiple Cropping - the practice of growing two or more crops in the same piece of land in same growing seasons instead of one crop
  • Pesticide- a substance used for destroying insects or other organisms harmful to cultivated plants or to animals
  • Subsoil - the soil lying immediately under the surface soil
  • Soil - the upper layer of earth in which plants grow, a black or dark brown material typically consisting of a mixture of organic remains, clay, and rock particles
  • Soil Erosion - is the wearing away of topsoil
  • Topsoil - the top layer of soil
  • Urbanization - the process of making an area more urban

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