Causes Of River Degradation And Measures To Reduce It

Environmental degradation and its impact

Describe a cause involved in the degradation of rivers and evaluate the measures that have been taken so far to reduce this degradation ( at least focus on the efforts of 2/3 organizations).

Environmental degradation has been a major issue in modern times. With the increasing population, the need for the natural resources is increasing as well, and this is a cause for concern.  The degradation refers to a discernable change in the quality of the natural resources and this occurs in twofold ways—firstly, the natural resources themselves are reduced at an alarming rate, for example, say petroleum degradation over the years with the increasing use of cars, and secondly, the degradation of the quality of the other natural resources, such as air (Alexander 2016). With the increase in the number of cars, the petroleum usage has been shot high, and subsequently, the carbon monoxide emission has lowered the quality of air considerably. The CFC gases emitted by the factories have increased considerably ever since the industrial revolution and has reached menacing degrees at present. This causes a threat to the ozone layer. The danger does not end here. There are other gases that are regularly emitted from the factories such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, that are instrumental in causing natural hazards like acid rain, which is a threat to the population and the vegetation. Human beings happen to be in major risk due to both land and river degradation. River degradation leads to flood and other natural calamities that can make human beings of the particular region homeless and even can destruct one entire civilization.

There are a number reasons that cause river degradation. As already discussed, the degradation is a direct result of 1) the increase in the population, and things get a bit more dangerous when it comes to river degradation. The interference with the river first started when the need for agricultural lands increased considerably, so much so, that the forests had to be cleared to allow more space for agriculture. The reason behind such actions are of course human beings and they are the ones who suffer directly due to this. 2) As a direct consequence, what happened inevitably after is soil erosion, because the trees that had earlier held the soil together were no longer in place, and a river close by could easily change its path due to the gullible soil (Blaikie and Brookfield 2015). This has more dangerous effects that one can imagine—floods can happen anytime, and flash floods do not allow the time to take any measures for survival, which means that such calamities will cause human beings become homeless in n time. Actually, soil erosion had started long ago when the aborigines had made use of the tree barks to make their canoes that they used for traversing the river for fishing purposes. The Murray river has been a burial site for the Aborigines for about 40,000 years, and thus one  does not have to have much knowledge about river degradation to know how polluted the river was back then, and the legacy has continued around Mungo National Park since then (Brito et al. 2015). 3)  The use of chemical manures and fertilizers have degraded the quality of the river water beyond measure, and has a far reaching effect on the ecosystem which is a big reason to worry. 4) The other thing that has increased considerably is the construction of dams. Dams are constructed for two main reasons, i) the agricultural fields need irrigation, and dams help in channelling the water conveniently to the fields, and ii) the production of hydroelectricity. Now, for the purposes to be fulfilled appropriately, the water flow has to be perfect, in volume and in force, and that is why diversions have to be made. In Australia, one of the most eminent diversions that have taken place is the diversion of the Snowy river into the Murray-Darling basin, under the massive hydro project that took place on the Snowy river at Talbingo, NSW. The greatest diversion happened in northern Australia when the Ord river was diverted near Kununurra, for the obvious reasons of irrigation and the production of hydroelectricity. The Murray-Darling had an irrigation system in the times around 1887, by George Chaffey, who was a Canadian. This had helped greatly back then the European population near Mildura, Victoria and also Renmark, South Australia (Campana et al. 2014). The damming that has happened thereafter has caused a lot of problems, which includes the change in the salinity and the overall quality of the river. Change in salinity is a direct threat to the vegetation and of course to the ecosystem that includes the animals that live in the immediate habitat (Collier et al. 2015).

Causes of river degradation

The best preventive measures that can be taken in this case is preparing for a good ground cover and maintaining an all round structure at different levels and research has shown that the soil erosion in Australia has reached a critical state. Costin (1980) concluded that 70% of the soil surface in Australia was desperately in need for immediate cover, and otherwise ran the risk of an imminent danger of a major erosion (Emam, Kappas and Hosseini 2015). The research conducted in 1984 by Lang and McCaffrey suggested that heavy rainfall was responsible in very few cases if we compare the cases where only the removal of firm ground cover was responsible.  Recent research by Lang and Rosewell from the Gennedah Research Centre suggest that an immediate stubble cover of about 30% is needed for damage control in NSW (Willow 2014).

Defeating the Weed Menace (2004-2009) was a program taken up by the Australian government when they recognized fully the danger that certain weeds can cause to the environment, especially to the land and river. The main agenda was to raise awareness about weeds, so that they can be effectively managed in the future and the whole process is well under control and it is expected that the river pollution can be considerably controlled by this.

Healthy Soils for Sustainable Farms (2005-2008) arranged a nation-wide program that encouraged the learning about healthy soil, which would encourage knowledge about the usage of green manure although they are a bit more expensive. This can be a great step into the future and a remarkable way to prevent the further degradation of the rivers.

Thus, it is quite apparent that the preventive measures have become a necessity, and the following points show that how the previous examples put forward by different cities and organizations can be used in the present day to prevent river degradation to some extent.

The regulation of the agricultural lands should be done with great care. The spacing between the fields should be maintained according to a set standard, strictly. The stubble management has to be carried out with immediate effect and the government should see to it. Irrigation has to be controlled by all means and this has been achieved by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA). There has been a roll out of the basin plan and a “no meter, no pump” policy has been taken up which has proved to be an effective solution to prevent the indiscriminate irrigation. If this can be carried out throughout in the same manner, it can be expected that things would improve in the near future. There is a 30^th June 2019 deadline for the development of quality water resources which everyone associated with the irrigation system has to comply with. We can hope that this would work out.

Conclusion:

Thus, it can be well perceived from the above points that river management is necessary and a regular watch should be kept on the catchment capacity, which can give one an idea about the quality of water management in a given area. Surface runoffs have to be reduced immediately, and this can be achieved with the help of step cultivation, which acts as a speed breaker for the water, and can be quite effective. If we have to be ahead of our situation, we need to seriously manage the grazing lands and thus minimize the soil erosion and finally reduce the natural calamities like floods and landslides. Preventive measures that are taken should be followed with absolute strictness for the benefit of the human race only because the calamities that will be triggered by river degradation will not be easy to handle otherwise.

References:

Alexander, D., 2016. Urban environmental degradation: Causes and solutions [pre-print]. Nova Science Publishers.Available at:https://viurrspace.ca/bitstream/handle/10613/4999/Alexander.Urban.Degradation.pdf?sequence=1

Blaikie, P. and Brookfield, H. eds., 2015. Land degradation and society. Routledge.Available at:

https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=HZpGCgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Land+degradation+and+society&ots=W72kxb_Fr7&sig=Wt6dOWo6O85ieYobu16CLwqtiqE#v=onepage&q=Land%20degradation%20and%20society&f=false

Brito, E.M., De la Cruz Barrón, M., Caretta, C.A., Goñi-Urriza, M., Andrade, L.H., Cuevas-Rodríguez, G., Malm, O., Torres, J.P., Simon, M. and Guyoneaud, R., 2015. Impact of hydrocarbons, PCBs and heavy metals on bacterial communities in Lerma River, Salamanca, Mexico: Investigation of hydrocarbon degradation potential. Science of The Total Environment, 521, pp.1-10.Available at:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969715002582

Campana, D., Marchese, E., Theule, J.I. and Comiti, F., 2014. Channel degradation and restoration of an Alpine river and related morphological changes. Geomorphology, 221, pp.230-241.Available at:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169555X1400316X

Collier, C.A., de Almeida Neto, M.S., Aretakis, G.M., Santos, R.E., de Oliveira, T.H., Mourão, J.S., Severi, W. and El-Deir, A.C., 2015. Integrated approach to the understanding of the degradation of an urban river: local perceptions, environmental parameters and geoprocessing. Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine, 11(1), p.69.Available at:

https://ethnobiomed.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s13002-015-0054-y?site=ethnobiomed.biomedcentral.com

Emam, A.R., Kappas, M. and Hosseini, S.Z., 2015. Assessing the impact of climate change on water resources, crop production and land degradation in a semi-arid river basin. Hydrology Research, 46(6), pp.854-870.vailable at:https://hr.iwaponline.com/content/46/6/854

Lal, R., 2015. Restoring soil quality to mitigate soil degradation. Sustainability, 7(5), pp.5875-5895.Available at:https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/5/5875/htm

Li, X., Perry, G. and Brierley, G.J., 2016. Grassland ecosystems of the Yellow River Source Zone: degradation and restoration. In Landscape and ecosystem diversity, dynamics and management in the Yellow River Source Zone (pp. 137-165). Springer International Publishing.Available at:https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-30475-5_7

Li, X.L., Perry, G.L.W., Brierley, G., Sun, H.Q., Li, C.H. and Lu, G.X., 2014. Quantitative assessment of degradation classifications for degraded alpine meadows (heitutan), Sanjiangyuan, western China. Land Degradation & Development, 25(5), pp.417-427.Available at:

https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1002/ldr.2154?r3_referer=wol&tracking_action=preview_click&show_checkout=1&purchase_referrer=onlinelibrary.wiley.com&purchase_site_license=LICENSE_DENIED

Willow, A.J., 2014. The new politics of environmental degradation: un/expected landscapes of disempowerment and vulnerability. Journal of Political Ecology, 21(1), pp.237-257.Available at:

https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&