Soil erosion and sustainable mountain development: Experiments, observations, and recommendations from the Ecuadorian Andes

Accelerated soil erosion is a common and environmentally destructive consequence of development, especially in mountain regions. Soil erosion is of special concern in agricultural lands, but agriculture is only one of many development activities that greatly accelerates soil erosion processes. Road building, trail use, excavation, extractive activities, and construction also can cause severe soil erosion. Soil conservation technologies are relatively simple and well known, but often they are not applied where they could be most effective because the connections between different elements..