Buried soils, stone lines, deposits of wind-blown material, and other evidence that material has been moved and redeposited is helpful in understanding natural erosion history. Thick weathered zones that developed under earlier climatic conditions may have been exposed to become the material in which new soils formed. In landscapes of the most recently glaciated areas, the consequences of natural erosion, or lack of it, are less obvious than where the surface and the landscape are of an early Pleistocene or even Tertiary age. Even on the landscapes of most recent glaciation, however, postglacial natural erosion may have redistributed soil materials on the local landscape. Natural erosion is an important process that affects soil formation and, like man-induced erosion, may remove all or part of soils formed in the natural landscape.
Accelerated erosion is largely the consequence of human activity.
The primary causes are tillage, grazing, and cutting of timber. The rate of erosion can be increased by activities other than those of humans. Fire that destroys vegetation and triggers erosion has the same effect. The spectacular episodes of erosion, such as the soil blowing on the Great Plains of the Central United States in the 1930s, have not all been due to human habitation. Frequent dust storms were recorded on the Great Plains before the region became a grain-producing area.