Raisa Gracheva

The first soil classifications dividing soils according to their individual properties and reflecting the resource value of soils were, in fact, substantive classifications. The appearance of soil science that studies soils as special natural bodies changing in space according to natural laws has led to the emergence of genetic soil classifications. The most detailed multilevel Classification of soils of the USSR (1977) is ecological genetic classification based on the relationship between soils and soil formation conditions, where the type of vegetation cover is the top hierarchy level. With the development of soil science, inconsistencies between the genetic classification and the growing volume of knowledge, difficulties in its formalization, and contradictions with the zonal approach have appeared. A paradigm of substantive classification has emerged based on modern measurable morphological and analytical indicators of soils. It is most fully implemented in the World reference b...

An overview of modern concepts of technogenesis and soil formation in the decommissioned wastewater treatment plants (WTPs) of sugar factories, as well as trends in soil property changes under waste use in agriculture as organic fertilizers in different natural zones is given. The physicochemical and biological properties of soils formed on different components of WTPs in the chernozemic zone of Russia are considered. On the earth walls made of material extracted from settling ponds during their construction, dark-humus typical soils (Cambisols) are formed; on the waste of sugar factories (press mud) transported to the surface of the walls, technogenic pelozems (Technosols) are identified. Within the bottoms of abandoned settling ponds filled by the sewage sludge, technogenic dark-humus stratozems (Fluvisols or Technosols) are formed. In cases of removal of technogenic sediment, after 30–40 years, dark-humus hydrometamorphic soils with clear bioturbation are formed. Compared to the background chernozems, the soils of the dried bottoms of ponds show an abundance of organic residues, an increase in alkalinity and nutrients, ferrugination, the development of phosphate and carbonate neoformations, cadmium and zinc pollution, and increased levels of mean annual greenhouse gas emissions. The usage of sugar production waste (alkaline press mud and strongly acidic beet pulp) in a pure form or in combination with other fertilizers is considered one of the methods of biologization of agriculture. However, this does not always lead to an improvement in soil properties and an increase in crop yields compared to control variants.

This study deals with population dynamics in the mountains of North Ossetia-Alania (Russian Federation) over the last 120 years. It documents the loss of mountain population over this period and analyses its implications on demography and land use. The combined processes of growth in the piedmont and outmigration from the mountains have led to a drop in the proportion of the mountain population within the Republic from 20% in 1900 to 1% in 2010. Most of the population loss in the mountains occurred before 1989 and was due to forced as well as opportunity-based migration. The key demographic effects of this exodus are a lack of young people and overrepresentation of old people in mountain communities, with an old-to-young-age dependency ratio of 1.42, which is very high in international comparison. Outmigration
and social change led to the abandonment of the majority of mountain settlements and of traditional land management, posing a threat to cultural heritage. The current open-access grazing regime leads to overuse of easily accessible pastures and
underuse of more remote grazing areas. Bush and forest encroachment are visible on remote pastures within the montane zone, and first stages of the process are also evident in subalpine meadows. Mountain development is at a crossroads today.
The survival of the remaining communities seems uncertain in spite of an emerging interest in mountains and mountain recreation among the urban population. Official development plans focus on resort-based tourism and hydropower generation, thus serving mainly lowland interests. The methods used for this study include a literature review, use of official statistics from different administrative levels, and five field campaigns from 2006 to 2010 for ground truthing, local data collection and survey, and for conducting interviews and informal discussions with officials and administrators at different levels, and mountain residents.

A scheme of determining the residence time (occurrence dynamics) of water-soluble organic matter in different horizons of a soil profile from lysimetric data is outlined. The calculations will contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of different soil-forming factors. The accumulated experience will permit researchers to address the solution to the more general problem of selecting the optimal bunches and revealing the regularities of their interaction in nature.

Sugar production generates a lot of wastewaters which are discharged into extensive treatment facilities. For the first time, soils and vegetation formed at the treatment facilities of the sugar industry in the Chernozem zone of Russia (Lgov sugar mill, Kursk region) were studied. Depending on the topography and activity/inactivity settling ponds Gleysols, Gleyic Cambisols, Eutric Cambisols and Technosols (Alkalic) were developed. Newly formed soils are alkaline, enriched with organic carbon and carbonates, and differ significantly from the background soils. In a wide variety of moisture conditions and soil properties, invasive Acer Negundo is widespread demonstrating a high degree of ecological plasticity. Newly formed landscapes, which are reservoirs of organic carbon and receive a huge microbial pool from wastewater, have become an integral part of the sugar industry environment.

<p>Soils formed at once abandoned and recultivated industrial waste dumping sites are key research objects both as models of soil-forming processes in underdeveloped soils and indicators of persistent or potential environmental hazards of dumps themselves. Our studies of technogenic surface-like soil formations (TSF) and soils were conducted on a closed landfill and two abandoned filtration fields from sugar factories  in Kursk region, central part of European Russia.</p> <p>Key properties of TSF and soils were defined with the assessments of their ecological, microbiological state and gas-geochemical condition. Set of methods (mesomorphological and micromorphological analysis, soil chemical and physico-chemical analysis, comparatively geographical method) was used for the detection of current elementary soil processes. Seasonal dynamics of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions from soils to the atmosphere was also under consideration. Main used methodology is a research of sustainable properties of soil solid-phase (“soil memory”) together with soil functioning.</p> <p>Long-term time series of high-detailed remote sensing data (from archive aerial photos of 1950s to actual satellite images and UAV optical photogrammetry) provided the possibility for the retrospective remote monitoring of the all abandoned dumps in study and reconstruction of their life cycles and land cover patterns.</p> <p>As a result for the three industrial waste dumping sites of different types and the varying age of abandonment and recultivation history there were elaborated schemes of chrono-functional zoning. Each chrono-functional zone is characterized by the specific set of TSF and soils. Among them, it was described technogenic surface-like soil formations of closed landfill, calcareous technosols with several thick organic layers at the bottom of abandoned field filtration cells, calcic anthrosols of field filtration cells spontaneously used for agriculture after the abandonment of sugar factories.</p> <p>The study is financially supported by RFBR project № 19–29–05025–mk.</p>

<p>The sugar industry has been widespread in the world for centuries, accumulating huge amounts of production waste. The development of modern technologies for sugar beet processing has led to the abandonment of dumps and sumps; not all of them were remediated later. In Russia, the industrial production of sugar from sugar beets was established in the early 19th century. For the first time, soils and landscapes formed on abandoned sites of sugar production waste in the Chernozem zone of Russia were studied. The distribution and chronological sequence of abandoned sites were identified using space images and field observation. Sugar production wastes discharged into sumps and landfills contained mainly carbonic lime (СаСО3), caustic lime Ca(OH)<sub>2</sub> and organic material, and an admixture of nitrogen, phosphorus potassium and sulfur (about 1-3%). It was revealed that in about 50 years, alkaline soil- geochemical landscapes were formed, which are unusual in the study area. Series of ponds temporarily filled with rainwater – former waste sumps – are covered with dense reed beds (Phragmítes austrális); there, strongly alkaline (pH ≥9), rich in organic matter and bioturbated soils with a thickness of up to 50-60 cm are formed. They can be attributed to Garbic Technosols (Carbonic), but their classification position in WRB needs to be clarified. Reed has spread widely in the surrounding water bodies and rivers; newly formed landscapes enrich waters with nutrients, contributing to their eutrophication. Soil mantle is also complicated by Technosols of industrial sites of sugar factories, soils in the remediated and no-remediated landfills, and soils irrigated with sugar mills' wastewater. All these soils are repositories of large volumes of organic carbon. The study of newly formed soils and landscapes, overgrowing of dumps and sumps is extremely important both for nature conservation and for understanding the seasonal patterns of carbon dioxide emissions from accumulations of organic substances. Integrated soil-geochemical and geobotanical studies of areas affected by the sugar industry can be pioneers, among other things, to expand the horizons of soil and geobotanical classification.</p> <p>The work was financially supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project № 19-29-05025-mk.</p>

Terraces represent one of the most common agricultural landscape elements in the mountainous regions of the North Caucasus. In the Central and West Caucasus, most of the arable terraces were converted into grasslands for grazing and haymaking 60-70 years ago and then abandoned or underused during the last 20-25 years. The role of abandoned terraces in maintaining the diversity of grasslands of the mountain slopes was studied in the case of eight terraces of different types. Plant communities of subalpine meadows and meadow steppes were distinguished on the terraces depending mainly on slope steepness at the same altitudes and to a lesser extent on the slope aspect. In general, the grasslands of the terrace platforms and those of original unterraced slopes had similar traits. At that, the mesophilous communities on the rich soils of terrace edges and scarp communities similar to vegetation of steep slopes with eroded soils create regular patterns on the terraced slopes. Thus, former ...

Mountain semi-natural grasslands of intermontane basins of Central Caucasus, North Ossetia-Alania and the history of its land use were studied. It was found that post-forest, meadow-steppe and partially subalpine grasslands in the study area had been used as croplands for centuries and have been transformed into grazing lands about 60 years ago. In the last 20 years, the grasslands have been underused. It was revealed that current spatial distribution of grasslands is different from the classic scheme of natural climate-induced vegetation distribution. Species composition of meadow steppes is similar in different locations and does not reflect climatic differences of “dry” leeward and “wet” windward slopes of the intermontane basins. Present-day soils reflect parent material differences and erosion degree, but not topography-induced local climate specificity. However, discovered buried soils showed contrasting soil diversity on the southern and northern slopes. It is assumed that th...

\textless}p{\textgreater}{\textless}br/{\textgreater}River} valleys have always been attractive places for human occupation. The history of Mesolithic and Neolithic floodplain occupation is linked with archives of fluvial evolution, in particular the intricate relationships between palaeo-hydrological regimes, ecological development and sedimentary environments. This paper describes floodplain evolution in the Russian forest lowland around Moscow since the last deglaciation. Although there is an obvious climatic

ABSTRACT The local landscapes of Early Mesolithic–Neolithic settlements within the Upper Volga outwash plain are reconstructed based on the investigation of the multilayer archaeological sites Minino 2 and Zamostye 5, Moscow district, Russian forest zone according to former descriptions by the authors (Vandenberghe et al., 2010). Regional environments in the different stages of the Holocene beginning from the Preboreal, are considered using pollen data while local landscapes (including relief, soil, vegetation and water regime) are reconstructed on the base of sediments, fossil soils and macrofossils, as preserved in a series of burial pits of different age. Colonization of the area by hunters–fishermen followed the local proglacial lake filling and shallowing at the end of the Lateglacial – Postglacial period, about cal 12.0–12.2 ka BP. Drying landscape inherited sharply undulating topography where elevated dry sites were populated up to a flooding episode between cal 2.5 and– 2.8 ka BP, or about 850 BC. Water receded between 1.7 and 1.9 cal ka BP, while large-scale peat accumulation and wetland expansion began about 650–700 BP. During the Holocene depressions had been gradually filled with organic deposits reflecting change of hydrological regimes; the most significant wetting occurred about cal 5.3–5.4 ka BP. Soil evolution has proceeded from initial calcareous alkaline soils to leached acid soils and further to peaty soils.

... and Information Raisa Gracheva and Alexandra Golyeva Abstract The role of landslides in mountain regions is complicated. ... The loss by landslides of fine earth, an irreversible resource, reduces the life-supporting resources of mountain regions. ...