Regional Scale desertification problems
- Climate change (or variability at medium year time period scale) during last ten years at season and year time scales made impact on the degradation of previously developed system for surface water storage.
- Socio-economic changes in rural areas and a shifting to market economy in agriculture during recent years, involves a spread of animal breading, especially a sheep breading that is traditional agricultural activity in this region of dry steppe. Thus is developed without special pasture management, that due to overgrazing made strong negative impact on vegetation cover, land use and soil layer properties provoking soil water erosion in prone zone.
- Abandoning older inefficient extensive and intensive irrigation systems based on water consuming technology like sprinkler irrigation, in a new marked situation, results in a degradation of these systems. This has a negative impact on the cultivation of vegetables at collective farm and small farmer levels as well as causing water shortage for domestic and home use.
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Legend 2 - Ground water rising due to intensive water irrigation use, increasing a soil salinization or soil sodification 9 - Soil dryness due to pasture digression, increasing risk of a soil salinization or soil sodification 10 - Pasture digression at dry sandy soil, increasing a risk of deflation and development of unstable surface 11 - Overgrazing of pasture at heavy soil, increasing of soil water erosion 12 - Cultivation of sandy soil, increasing risk of soil deflation 14 - Cultivation of solonets and solonchaks soils, increasing of soil salinity |
Fig. 1: Degradation map is derived from risk degradation map
