Soil erosion is the displacement of the upper layer of soil. It is a form of soil degradation. This natural process is caused by the dynamic activity of erosive agents. Nonliving agents such as water or ice and air and living agents like animals and humans. In accordance with these agents erosion is sometimes divided into various forms of erosion such as water erosion or glacial erosion and zoogenic erosion or anthropogenic erosion. Soil erosion may be a slow process that continues relatively unnoticed. Sometimes it may occur at an alarm ingrate causing a serious loss of topsoil. The loss of soil from farmland may be reflected in reduced crop production and potential lower surface water quality or damaged drainage networks. Soil erosion could also cause sinkholes. Human activities have increased by ten to fifty times the rate at which erosion is occurring globally. Excessive erosion causes both onsite and offsite problems. Onsite impacts include decreases in agricultural productivity and ecological collapse both due to the loss of nutrient rich upper soil layers. In some cases, the eventual end result is desertification. Offsite effects include sedimentation of waterways and eutrophication of water bodies as well as sediment related damage to roads and houses. Water and wind erosion are the two primary causes of land degradation and combined they are responsible for about 84 percentage of the global extent of degraded land making excessive erosion one of the most significant environmental problems worldwide. Intensive agriculture and deforestation as well as urban sprawl are amongst the most significant human activities in regard to their effect on stimulating erosion. However, there are many prevention and remediation practices that can curtail or limit erosion of vulnerable soils. Rainfall and the surface runoff which may result from rainfall produces four main types of soil erosion splash erosion sheet erosion rill erosion and gully erosion. Splash erosion is generally seen as the first and least severe stage in the soil erosion process which is followed by sheet erosion then rill erosion and finally gully erosion. In splash erosion the impact of a falling raindrop creates a small crater in the soil ejecting soil particles. Surface runoff occurs if the soil is saturated or if the rainfall rate is greater than the rate at which water can infiltrate into the soil. The runoff will transport loosened soil particles down the slope if it has sufficient flow energy. Sheet erosion is the transport of loosened soil particles by overland flow. Rill erosion refers to the development of small ephemeral concentrated flow paths which function as both sediment source and sediment delivery systems for erosion on hill slopes. Flow depths in rills are typically of the order of a few centimeters or less and along the channel slopes might be quite steep. This means that rills exhibit hydraulic physics very different from water flowing through the deeper wider channels of streams and rivers. Gully erosion occurs when runoff water accumulates and rapidly flows in narrow channels during or immediately after heavy rains or melting snow removing soil to a considerable depth. Valley or stream erosion occurs with continued water flow along with a linear feature. The erosion is both downward deepening the valley and head ward extending the valley into the hillside creating head cuts and steep banks.