They are very adapted to trapping pesticides and reducing rill erosion.

There are four primary types of erosion that occur as a direct result of rainfall-splash erosion,sheet erosion, rill erosion, and gully erosion.

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 hillslopes.

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 (the most severe of the four).

In 1987, scientist J. Poesen conducted an experiment on the Huldenberg field in Belgium which revealed that during a moderate rainfall, rill erosion removed as much as much as 200 kg (in submerged weight) of rock.

Sheet and rill erosion is within estimated soil loss tolerance on 95.1 percent, and wind erosion is within estimated soil loss tolerance on 99.4 percent of US pastureland inventoried by the US Natural Resources Conservation Service.