What is soil and water conservation engineering?

Here is explanation on what is soil and water conservation engineering, why it is needed and what are its major benefits.

As conservation of natural resources is a must for the maintenance of life on planet earth, the soil and water conservation engineering helps in improving the overall production of good quality food.

So understanding the implications of soil and water conservation engineering is a must for todays farmers to increase the quality and productivity of their farm, that is why we have written this article to help you provide the information about it.

Soil and water conservation engineering Facts, Benefits and Implications

Soil and water conservation engineering

Soil and water are regarded as the two major natural resources. Life on the earth and its existence depends highly up on the proper functioning of these two resources. 

So, we have to conserve these two very important natural, fundamental resources and for this purpose we rely on soil and water conservation engineering.

In soil and water conservation engineering, we mainly identify and try to solve the problems like soil erosion, sedimentation and silting in the reservoirs, land slide, gully development, water pollution etc. are some of the major problems. 

Defining Soil and water conservation engineering

To explain the details of Soil and water conservation engineering you need to first know what is soil and water conservation, so we have explained both of them below

1. Water Conservation

Water conservation is defined as the use and management of water for the good of all its living users. Water is an abundant resource, yet only three percent of all water is regarded as fresh water, and less amount of freshwater is actually usable.

As much of the usable water is needed for the purpose of irrigation and other agricultural activities, that is why water conservation is very important which can be successfully done by soil and water conservation engineering.

2. Soil Conservation

Soil conservation is defined as the process of controlling soil erosion in order to maintain good soil fertility for the purpose of increase in agricultural productivity. 

Soil erosion is caused due to the removal of the top layer of soil, the organic matter and nutrients which destroys the fertility and effects farming, that is why soil conservation is done by the means of soil and water conservation engineering.

Purpose and Main Importance of Soil and water conservation engineering 

Soil and water conservation engineering is defined as the practice of using new technical and engineering based technologies to carry out the process of soil and water conservation in a more efficient way.

The main purpose of Soil and water conservation engineering is to ;

1. Improve Soil Fertility
2. Prevent Soil erosion
3. Improving Planation
4. Water Wastage Control
5. Improve the productivity of land
6. Improve the quality of production
7. Building of proper drainage etc.

Due to the constant increase the human population there has been depletion of land and high usage of water which has bought down the rate of healthy agricultural production and this is what makes Soil and water conservation engineering very important as it can help solve all these problems.

Soil and water conservation engineering Techniques

There are many different types of techniques used in soil and water conservation engineering, and some of them are listed below;

1. Land surveying and land leveling instruments
2. Farm soil testing
3. Soil cover management
4. Hydrology
5. Drainage systems
6. Applying loss equations
7. Methods of water harvesting
8. Farm pond designing
9. Water Storing management
10. Compost management
11. Use of IOT (Internet of things)

Benefits of soil and water conservation engineering

There are many amazing benefits of soil and water conservation engineering, we have listed some of them below.

Soil and water conservation engineering helps us in ;

1. Proper Water Management To increase production
2. Soil Management to improve the quality of soil
3. Prevention of soil erosion
4. Prevention of water wastage
5. saving money, environment and energy
6. protecting the drinking water resources
7. reducing or minimize the pollution and health problems
8. reducing the need for new waste water treatment facilities
9. saving the aquatic environment
10. saving the energy which is required for heat, treat and pumping the water

Book For Soil Water Conservation & Engineering

There are many books and pdf available on soil and water conservation engineering which are good for students and people who want general information on this topic.

Language of the test written in these books is English and most of them are available for free on various internet website, soil and water conservation engineering book written by Dr. A. Mishra is regarded one of the best.

Soil and water conservation engineering Books and Pdf cover topics on ;

1. Study and basic use of surveying and leveling instruments
2. Study of Chain and cross staff survey
3. Major Compass survey
4. Soil erosion
5. Soil management
6. Design of contour bund
7. Runoff computation and universal soil loss equation
8. Rainwater harvesting
9. Design of good farm pond
10. Plane management table survey
11. Dumpy level study
12. Computation of area and its volume
13. Soil erosion control
14. Selection of pumps etc.

Note : The information on this website is given for general information on soil and water conservation engineering, so if you feel any update is needed then comment below.

Also read : What is Agri-clinic and Agribusiness centers?