Humans Move More Earth Than Nature Itself

It’s official: humans have become the planet’s most powerful force of erosion.

“Mining landscapes… are responsible for more sediment production than paved road construction, house construction, and agriculture, which, in combination, produce more sediment than natural processes.” (Mossa & James, 2022)

According to geomorphologists, human activity now shifts over 300 billion tons of earth and rock every year. This is far more (by 10x) than all rivers, glaciers, wind, and waves COMBINED.

What’s Moving All That Earth?

• Mining and quarrying: Massive open pits and gravel operations are the biggest contributors.
• Construction: Roads, buildings, and infrastructure carve and fill the landscape.
• Agriculture: Plowing, terracing, and soil loss reshape entire regions.

Together, these actions move 10 times more material than all natural processes combined.
That’s roughly 150 cubic kilometers of earth each year. This is enough to cover the entire state of Michigan in a meter of soil.

Why Does That Matter?

When we move this much earth, we impact the systems that sustain life including:

• Water: Altered flow paths, lost wetlands, and groundwater disruption.
• Habitat: Displacement of entire ecosystems and species.
• Climate: Carbon released from disturbed soils and sediments.
• Legacy: Artificial landforms that will mark this era in the rock record (a geologic signature of the Anthropocene).

But beyond the global scale, this reality carries very local consequences. Every new mining project represents a potential major reconfiguration of groundwater, soil, and sediment flow — the same forces that regulate wells, wetlands, and more.

Why Independent Hydrogeologic Review Is Essential

Understanding these impacts isn’t simple. Subsurface systems — aquifers, recharge zones, and flow networks — behave like the planet’s hidden circulatory system. Once disrupted, they can take generations to recover, if ever.

That’s why thorough and independent hydrogeologic review is not a formality, it’s a safeguard.
It ensures that:

• Water movement and recharge are modeled accurately.
• Contaminant transport risks are properly evaluated.
• Wetlands and groundwater-dependent ecosystems are not unintentionally drained or degraded.

As the U.S. Geological Survey reminds us, groundwater and surface water are “a single resource, flowing together within the hydrologic cycle.” (Heath, 2004).
When we alter one, we inevitably alter the other.

We’ve become Earth’s primary landscape engineer.
The question is no longer whether we shape the land. It’s how responsibly we choose to do it.

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References:

Hooke, R. L. (1994). On the efficiency of humans as geomorphic agents. GSA Today, 4(9), 217–225.
https://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/4/9/pdf/i1052-5173-4-9-217.pdf

Hooke, R. L. (2000). On the history of humans as geomorphic agents. Geology, 28(9), 843–846.
https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(2000)28<843:OTHOHA>2.0.CO;2

Mossa, J., & James, L. A. (2022). Geomorphic perspectives on mining landscapes, hazards, and sustainability. In D. J. Favis-Mortlock & J. Boardman (Eds.), Treatise on Geomorphology (2nd ed., Vol. 9, pp. 107–135). Elsevier.
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818234-5.00159-0

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). (2004). Basic ground-water hydrology (Water-Supply Paper 2220; R. C. Heath, Author). U.S. Department of the Interior.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/2220/report.pdf

Zhang, J., Liesch, T., & Goldscheider, N. (2025). Impacts of climate change and human activities on global groundwater storage from 2003 to 2022. Journal of Hydrology, 664, 134298.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2025.134298