How To (Literally) Save Earth
Thanks to http://www.soylent.com/earth for sponsoring this video! Thanks also to our supporters on https://www.patreon.com/MinuteEarth : - Today I Found Out - Maarten Bremer - Jeff Straathof...
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Soil is the literal foundation for much of life, yet we treat soil like... well, like dirt. Maybe that's because, most of the time, soil takes care of itself; decomposing plants and animals and degrading bedrock produce new soil at roughly the same pace that wind and water erode it away But this balance between soil formation and erosion is easily tipped. For millennia, the tiny Pacific island of Mangaia was covered in a thin layer of fertile soil, but after humans arrived around 2000 years ago, their slash-and-burn agriculture exposed the soil to the elements. Over several centuries, rain and wind swept virtually all the nutrient-rich topsoil from Mangaia’s hillsides and concentrated it in just a few arable valleys, which people viciously fought ov...
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Soil is the literal foundation for much of life, yet we treat soil like... well, like dirt. Maybe that's because, most of the time, soil takes care of itself; decomposing plants and animals and degrading bedrock produce new soil at roughly the same pace that wind and water erode it away But this balance between soil formation and erosion is easily tipped. For millennia, the tiny Pacific island of Mangaia was covered in a thin layer of fertile soil, but after humans arrived around 2000 years ago, their slash-and-burn agriculture exposed the soil to the elements. Over several centuries, rain and wind swept virtually all the nutrient-rich topsoil from Mangaia’s hillsides and concentrated it in just a few arable valleys, which people viciously fought ov...
