Human economic activity and increasing urbanisation are among the main reasons of worsening the quantitative and qualitative state of surface waters. The rate and scale of resulting anthropogenic changes more and more frequently exceed the natural processes occurring in the environment. The outcome of the changes may be either a deficit or excess of water and pollution of extensive areas, which very often are difficult to reverse [Kanownik and Rajda 2011a, Kanownik

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The paper presents water retention of alluvial soils in the Odra valley. Floodplain soils are one of the most fertile intrazonal soils in Europe. The relevant field studies and laboratory tests were carried out during the vegetation seasons (2012 and 2013) on arable lands located in Tworków (south of the Silesian Province, Poland). A three pedotransfer functions (PTFs) parameter van Genuchten type model was used to describe the water retention curves of alluvial soils. Fitted soil water retention curve (SWRC) parameters were regressed linearly with a different number of soil physical properties in the RETC and Rosetta. The first model (PTF-1) uses soil textural classes, consisting of a lookup table that provides parameter averages for each USDA textural class. The second model (PTF-2) uses sand, silt, and clay percentages as input, and the third model (PTF-3) includes bulk density as a predictor. The simulation results were considered for each layer separately and as a whole for all soil profiles. The predicted values of water content of the RETC and Rosetta for each soil layer are close to the measured values (R 2 = 0.825-0.995). Simulated values of water content (all soil profiles) by PTF-3 are very similar to the measured values. The predicted values of the residual soil water content (θr) and the saturated soil water content (θs) by PTF-3 provided good simulation results R 2 = 0.860 and R 2 = 0.667, respectively. The specific alluvial soil conditions affect the high water content in the soil, which is reflected in the content of water available for plants. This information should contribute to the rational management of water resources in the agricultural area, what can be used to mitigate the effects of drought.

Soil quality is a very important issue that continuously evaluates and develops in different countries. The concept of soil quality was developed in the 20 th century and contains three main aspects: physical, chemical and biological [1][2][3]. From an agricultural point of view, soil physical quality (SPQ) decreases mainly in cases of soil cultivation due to decreases in soil porosity, increased soil bulk density (BD), aeration and water balance, as well as increases in soil penetration resistance, structural degradation and erosion risk [4][5][6][7]. Soil quality can influence yield in terms of quantity and/or quality, which is not negligible when viewed against the background of what is sometimes described as growing "soil degradation" [8].Alluvial soils have the highest fertility and productivity with respect to other soils [9]. They are present mostly along rivers and are carried by its

In this paper, changes in the duration of the meteorological vegetation period in Poland were analyzed for the three decade period: 1981-2010 as compared to the 1971-2000 period. The meteorological data regarding the monthly mean air temperature values from 53 weather stations distributed evenly across Poland were used. It was proved that the meteorological vegetation period in the years 1981-2010 increased by four days on average, as compared to the 1971-2000 period.