Assessment of the State and Protection Treatment of Arable Soils in the Stavropol Territory

Abstract

The arable soils of Stavropol are affected by various natural and man-made factors that reduce soil fertility, therefore, the development of a number of specific soil protection measures is an important practical task. The processes affecting the soil are usually complex and include a certain number of factors (water erosion, deflation, etc.), which are more or less manifested on a certain type of chernozem and chestnut soils. The main task is to comprehensively assess the state of arable soils based on the information about the areas of factors affecting soils in the survey areas. For this purpose, the calculation method of main components is used, which allows to obtain the values of the complex indicator of the state of soil (CISS). It was found that the main component PC 1 includes the following significant factors: solonchaks and saline soils; salt marshes and washed away soils. The PC 2 component includes deflated and waterlogged soils. The main contribution to the PC 3 component is by the following factor: soils destroyed by combined erosion and deflation.The coordinates of the calculated point BST and the values of the CISS ( D i) are determined and calculated in the sub-space of selected principal components. Then by the method of data grouping, the surveyed areas of the region are rankedaccording to the CISS values and the groups of areas with satisfactory, moderate and unsatisfactory soil conditions are formed, and the CISS data are presented in cartographic form. The analysis of the map-scheme of certain types of soils over the territory of the region and their comparison with the data of the map of soil state level at the survey points allows to conclude that in most cases certain negative factors of soil-climatic character and soil genesis correspond to the unsatisfactory level of soil state according to the CISS values ( D i). Based on the comprehensive assessment of the soil state level, specific soil protection measures have been developed for basic tillage: energy-saving technologies with dump processing of semi-fallow lands in the areas with a satisfactory level; combined subsurface loosening in the areas with moderate level; and shallow mulching treatment down to 10-12 cm in deflationary areas and deep chiseling down to 40 cm on saline soils with unsatisfactory level of soil state.