**Author details**

Adelaide Munodawafa

Midlands State University, Zimbabwe

### **References**


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I would like to express my gratitude to GTZ for providing the much needed funding through CONTILL (Conservation Tillage), a collaborative project between GTZ and the Government of Zimbabwe (GoZ). Further acknowledgement goes to the GoZ, for providing me with the opportunity and research facilities. I would like to thank all the CONTILL members from both Domboshawa and especially Makoholi site for their relentless support

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**Chapter 8**

**Gully Erosion in Southeastern Nigeria: Role of Soil**

The countries of sub-Saharan Africa are besieged by serious environmental degradation re‐ sulting in desert encroachment, draught and soil erosion due to either wind impact or very high intensive rainfall resulting in heavy runoff and soil loss. The problems have adversely affected agricultural productivity and thus casting doubt of food security in the zone. The ecological and social settings in the zone are often distorted some times leading to losses in human and material capitals. In Nigeria desertification and aridity are the major environ‐ mental problems of the Northern part of the country while the high torrential rainfall of the southern Nigeria creates enabling environment for catastrophic soil erosion in the region.

The greatest threat to the environmental settings of southeastern Nigeria is the gradual but constant dissection of the landscape by soil erosion by water. Although the incipient stages of soil erosion through rill and interrill are common and easily managed by the people through recommended soil conservation practices, the gully forms have assumed a different dimension such that settlements and scarce arable land are threatened. Therefore, gully ero‐ sion problems have become a subject of discussion among soil scientists, geographers, geol‐ ogists, engineers and social scientists. Ofomata [1] indicated that gully erosion types are the most visible forms of erosion in Nigeria mainly because of the remarkable impression they leave on the surface of the earth. Again Ofomata [2] remarked that more than 1.6% of the entire land area of eastern Nigeria is occupied by gullies. This is very significant for an area that has the highest population density 500 persons per km2 in Nigeria. Before the 1980's the classical gully sites in the region were the Agulu, Nanka, Ozuitem, Oko in Aguata area, Isuikwuato and Orlu. With the increased development activities the number and magnitude escalated thus making many government administrations within the region to set up soil erosion control with different names in different states. At the last count the Federal Govern‐

> © 2012 Igwe; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

© 2012 Igwe; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Properties and Environmental Factors**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

C.A. Igwe

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/51020

**1. Introduction**
