Published in Scientific Papers. Series A. Agronomy, Vol. LXV, Issue 2
Written by Olesea COJOCARU
Visible soil erosion processes began to develop in the territory of Moldova around the second half of the 19th century. For a long time, their quantitative indicators of its spatial spread were not due to the lack of such cartographic data. After the early 1950s, soil mapping in agricultural units and administrative districts. Fragmented relief is one of the indispensable conditions for the development of slope processes, including erosion processes. Anthropogenic impact plays an important role in increasing the areas affected by erosion. The purpose of this paper is to examine the content and distribution of humus in eroded soils in the Republic of Moldova to assess their fertility. As a result of the evaluation of the humus losses on the three degrees of erosion, it was found that, for chernozems, they correspond approximately to the row: 20, 40 and 60%. Some trans-boundary passages are observed in carbonate chernozems - being the least resistant to erosion (28, 48 and 69%) and an insignificant variation are characteristic of typical chernozems and to a lesser extent leached (17, 39, 60 and 16, 38, 64%), but in soils with a high erodibility these figures of humus losses, almost equal. Brown soils are related to erosion on average for chernozems approximately 20, 40, 65%. We can state that, exclusively, it presents the gray soils in which the degree of erosion, weak and moderate, is distinguished by lower humus losses. If we refer to the whole, then the series of 20, 40 and 60% humus losses in the eroded soils compared to the standard, we are quantitatively characterized by their real degradation effect, quite terrible, caused by erosion. But from a practical point of view it is essential, because these figures characterize the real humus degradation of the underlying soil layer (50-100 cm), which has a significance for assessing their fertility especially for perennial crops, which develops a deep root system.
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