Abstract

The soil erosion in Boliva is a serious problem now. Water erosion, wind erosion and tillage erosion all can cause the soil erosion.Almost 45% of Bolivia’s 1 098 000 hectares is forestland, covering and lying in the departments of Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz and the tropical parts of Cochabamba and La Paz. The loss of this vegetation began a process of erosion of fertile topsoil that continues to the present day. Bolivia is especially vulnerable to soil erosion because of the steep mountainous nature of the land.Without vegetation to slow run-off, absorb excess water, and hold the soil together, large amounts of fertile topsoil continue to be lost to erosion.Population pressure is also a contributing factors, the substantial number of Bolivians who live in the highlands are by necessity using the same limited supplies of wood for cooking and clearing the same fragile land for agricultural farming. Removal of the vegetation cover,poor arable farming methods and urbanisation, highway construction and industry all can cause soil erosion in Bolivia. Soil erosion is so important because it cause a lot damage.Soil erosion leads to desertification and results in the loss of soil fertility and makes the land barren. It also influences agriculture and cause the shortage of the food. When the country has soil erosion problem. It will affect to change of the landscape and plant growth.

What is more about it? The desertification which caused by soil erosion affects 41 percent of the national territory, 439,432 square km, where 77 percent of the national inhabitants live, some 6.4 million people.As much as 89 percent of Bolivians living in the affected territory are in extreme poverty.The country loses 1.8 million tons of different agriculture products each year owing to soil erosion.

In the future, soil erosion may destory more than 50% of the country land to desert and causes shortage of food. To slove this problem, we need to prevent erosion of soil, it is important to maintain a vegetation cover, especially in the most vulnerable areas, and careful management of irrigation, to prevent the application of too much or too little water, should help reduce the problem of salination. Then, we also need to Attempt to restrict highway construction and urbanisation to areas of lower agricultural potential and must be carefully managed livestock grazing rate s\to prevent overgrazing.