Background Soil erosion is a global environment issue resulting in reduction in the soil properties. Soil erosion not only decreases land productivity and crop yield, but affects eco-agricultural health. Magnetic susceptibility (MS) technique is a simple and rapid skill in high spatial-temporal resolution, which is suitable for several types of environmental carrier.

Methods According to studies in last 70 years, this paper took two carriers (natural soils and artificial magnetic materials) and two types of measurement (qualitative description and quantitative evaluation) as the main line. The aim of this paper is to review the development of MS technique and provide an effective basis for the study of new soil erosion methods.

Results 1) Researches of MS technology in soil erosion appeared later than in other fields. The research teams were relatively unitary, and the related results were distributed in pointed-source pattern. The available achievements mainly come from several regions or research teams, but it has not formed a mature research network in the world. However, the studies developed from a single region to the global, while the proportion of Chinese research continues to increase. 2) Based on the magnetic research of natural soil samples, artificial magnetic tracers provide a new carrier for the research under experimental conditions, which makes the soil magnetism in experimental scenes more adjustable and controllable. For the natural soil, the heterogeneity of magnetic susceptibility exists in the farmland slope affected by human tillage activities for a long time, and topography, tillage methods and management measures determine the law of soil migration on the slope. By taking advantage of the strong controllability and easy identification of artificial magnetic materials, the researchers used a variety of magnetic materials to simulate the transport process of soil particles, and specifically applied the magnetic susceptibility technology to simulation experiments at different spatial and temporal scales. 3) MS has been shown to be a reliable, economic and rapid method for tracking soil redistribution. However, the researches of MS technology in soil erosion are almost in exploring the qualitative patterns. Although it reached agreement of MS method in its principle and distribution in soil profile and zonal scale, but most existing results were based on empirical pattern. More case studies are necessary to verify the link between soil movement and magnetic susceptibility. Several studies on estimating soil loss using MS, such as mixing artificial magnetic particles into soil, estimating erosion depth according to soil magnetic indexes and relating MS to radioactive isotopes, is the key of current research.

Conclusions No direct causal connection has been established between soil loss and magnetic susceptibility, and further quantitative research is needed to link magnetic susceptibility to soil redistribution. The amount of qualitative researches is more than that of quantitative researches, and it requires more quantitative expression to evaluate soil erosion process and mechanism.