Resources and Development Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key definitions, soil types, land categories, and resource management concepts from the Resources and Development textbook chapter.

Resource

Everything available in our environment which can be used to satisfy our needs, provided it is technologically accessible, economically feasible, and culturally acceptable.

Sustainable Development

Development that takes place without damaging the environment, ensuring that development in the present does not compromise the needs of future generations.

Agenda 21

A declaration signed by world leaders in 1992 at the UNCED in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, aiming to achieve global sustainable development by combating environmental damage, poverty, and disease.

Resource Planning

A strategy for the judicious use of resources involving identification and inventory, evolving a planning structure, and matching resource plans with overall national development goals.

Culturable Waste Land

Agricultural land left uncultivated for more than $5$ agricultural years.

Current Fallow

Land left without cultivation for one or less than one agricultural year.

Other than Current Fallow

Uncultivated land left fallow for the past $1$ to $5$ agricultural years.

Net Sown Area

The total physical extent of land on which crops are sown and harvested in an agricultural year.

Gross Cropped Area

The total area sown more than once in an agricultural year added to the net sown area.

Bangar

Old alluvial soil containing a higher concentration of kanker nodules and having coarser particles than Khadar.

Khadar

New alluvial soil characterized by finer particles, higher fertility, and lower concentration of kanker nodules compared to Bangar.

Regur Soil

Also known as Black Soil; a clayey soil typical of the Deccan trap region made of lava flows, ideal for growing cotton and highly capable of holding moisture.

Laterite Soil

An acidic soil ($\text{pH} < 6.0$) formed under tropical and subtropical climates with alternating wet and dry seasons, resulting from intense rainfall leaching.

Gully Erosion

A form of soil erosion where running water cuts through clayey soils to create deep channels called gullies.

Bad Land

Land rendered unfit for cultivation due to severe gully erosion, specifically referred to as ravines in the Chambal basin.

Sheet Erosion

Soil erosion occurring when water flows as a sheet over large areas down a slope, washing away the top layer of soil.

Contour Ploughing

Ploughing along the contour lines of a slope to slow down the flow of water and decrease soil erosion.

Strip Cropping

A farming practice where fields are divided into strips with grass grown between crops to disrupt wind force.

Shelter Belts

Rows of trees planted to reduce wind speed, protecting soil and helping to stabilize sand dunes in arid regions.

Soil Profile

The vertical arrangement of soil layers, consisting of Top soil (upper layer), Subsoil (weathered rocks, sand, silt, clay), Substratum (weathered parent rock material), and Unweathered parent bed rock.