In
agriculture, a
terrace is a leveled section of a
hilly cultivated area, designed as a method of
soil conservation to slow or prevent the rapid
surface runoff of
irrigation water. Often such land is formed into multiple terraces, giving a stepped appearance. The human landscapes of
rice cultivation in terraces that follow the natural contours of the escarpments like
contour plowing is a classic feature of the island of
Bali and the
Banaue Rice Terraces in
Benguet,
Philippines. In
Peru, the
Inca made use of otherwise unusable slopes by
drystone walling to create terraces.
This form of land use is prevalent in many countries, and is used for crops requiring a lot of water, such as rice. Terraces are also easier for both mechanical and manual sowing and harvesting than a steep slope would be.
Natural terracing, the result of small-scale erosion, is formed where cattle are grazed for long periods on steep sloping pasture. Sometimes, as a Glastonbury Tor, the result is regular enough to give an impression of archaeological artifacts.
From its origins in agriculture the practice of formally terracing a sloping site evolved in gardening. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon could have been built on an artificial mountain with stepped terraces like those on a ziggurat. At the seaside Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, the villa gardens of Julius Caesar's father-in-law fell away giving pleasant and varied views of the Bay of Naples.
