ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the causes of soil degradation and soil pollution. It explores the natural causes of soil degradation and then discusses the agricultural activities that led to a deterioration of the soil. The chapter also introduces the different heavy metal pollutants before discussing the agricultural, industrial, and urban sources of soil pollution. Soil erosion is one of the most important environmental and agricultural problems all over the world, and it is also the main contributor to soil degradation, inflicting damage to soil resources, impairing the flow of ecosystem services, and jeopardizing sustainability. The extensive mining and smelting with poor environmental standards over the last decades has resulted in large amounts of heavy metal contaminants affecting farmlands through atmospheric deposition, waste transportation, and irrigation with wastewater and sludge. Moreover, the roots of plants can absorb these heavy metal pollutants, which accumulate in the crops and damage the health of the people who eat them.
