The quantitative and qualitative depletion of water resources (both surface and groundwater) is closely related to the need to protect soils against degradation, rationalization of land use, and regulation of surface water runoff within the watershed area. Belgorod Oblast (27,100 km²), one of the administrative regions of European Russia, was chosen as the study area. It is characterized by a high activity of soil erosion (the share of eroded soils is about 48% of the total area of arable land). The development phase of the River Basin Environmental Management Projects (217 river basins from the fourth to seventh order) allowed for the proceeding of the development of an integrated monitoring system for river systems and river basin systems. The methods used to establish a geoecological network for regional monitoring include the selection and application of GIS techniques to quantify the main indicators of ecological state and predisposition of river basins to soil erosion (the share of cropland and forestland, the share of the south-oriented slopes, soil erodibility, Slope Length and Steepness (LS) factor, erosion index of precipitation, and the river network density) and the method of a hierarchical classification of cluster analysis for the grouping of river basins. An approach considering the typology of river basins is also used to expand the regional network of hydrological gauging stations to rationalize the national hydrological monitoring network. By establishing 16 additional gauging stations on rivers from the fourth to seventh order, this approach allows for an increase in the area of hydro-agroecological monitoring by 1.26 times (i.e., up to 77.5% of the total area of Belgorod Oblast). Some integrated indicators of agroecological (on the watershed surface) and hydroecological (in river water flow) monitoring are proposed to improve basin environmental management projects. Six-year monitoring showed the effectiveness of water quality control measures on an example of a decrease in the concentrations of five major pollutants in river waters.

Among the reasons for soil degradation, runoff-induced erosion causes the greatest damage to agriculture in European Russia. One of the effective tools for regulating soil erosion is changing the structure of sown areas and the composition of crops with a focus on soil conservation and rehabilitation land use. The aim of this paper is to present the results of the impact of the program on river-basin nature management and the adaptive landscape agriculture system (ALAS) on changes in soil losses due to storm erosion in one of the agriculturally most developed and, at the same time, most eroded administrative regions of European Russia—Belgorod Oblast. In this study, the calculation of potential soil washout was carried out for three cropland models: (1) The maximum erosion potential of the territory, expressed in terms of soil washout from bare (clean) fallow areas; (2) soil washout, considering the actual structure of sown areas over the past 10 years; and (3) soil washout, considering the full implementation of projects for the erosion-control organization of cropland within the framework of ALAS. The calculation of erosion-induced soil losses was carried out according to the USLE model adapted to regional environmental conditions, while the C-factor values were set separately for each model. For model 1, the average soil loss is 11.3 t/ha per year; for model 2, it is 3.5 t/ha per year; and for model 3, it is 2.2 t/ha per year. It was found that the current programs for the biologization of agriculture and the contour-reclamation organization of cropland would have a noticeable erosion-control effect. It is noteworthy that the greatest efficiency was modeled for areas with unfavorable relief conditions, with up to 40% reduction in soil losses as compared to actual ones.

Proceedings of the International conference

The article is concerned with the current state of digitalisation of the agro-industrial complex (AIC) in the Russian Federation. It lists a number of legal instruments that have been approved by the legislative authorities and establish the digitalisation trends of the agro-industrial complex at the federal and regional levels. It shows GIS technology opportunities in the process of the AIC digitalisation. It deals with the implementation of the Decree of the Russian Federation Government, which has determined the establishment of excellent scientific and educational centres in connection with the implementation of one of such projects in the Belgorod Region. It examines the experience of both project development for the basin-based agricultural landscapes using GIS technologies and the introduction of soil protection agriculture within the entire region in relation to the territory of the Belgorod Region. It shows changes in the available land structure in the Belgorod Region due to the introduction of basin-based nature management projects. It considers the advantages of the basin approach to be used in the course of the AIC digitalisation.

This article showcases the outcomes of a comprehensive spatiotemporal dynamic analysis conducted in forest vegetation areas within the forest-steppe zone of the Central Russian Upland (eastern Europe), spanning the period from 1970 to 2020. This study utilized high-resolution data from the Corona satellite system from the year 1970 as well as satellite imagery from the ArcGIS World Imagery database. Soil properties and their changes were assessed based on the analysis of soil bulk density (930 samples), soil organic carbon features, pH, available phosphorus, and the composition of salt extracts (1362 samples). We collected and analyzed 3920 soil samples in the field to study the impact of shelterbelts on soil moisture over a period of two years. For six selected key sites with a total area of 1722 km², it was found that over a 50-year period, the area covered by forest vegetation increased from 14% to 24%. This expansion was primarily due to the planting and growth of young shelterbelts in the 1970s–1980s as well as widening anti-erosion shelterbelts on slopes and gullies. The average linear growth rate of forest vegetation boundaries was found to be 23.5 m (4.7 m per decade) for the entire study area. The expansion was highest on west-facing slopes, which was attributed to the higher moisture content from windward atmospheric precipitation events. However, alongside the increase in forest cover, degradation was also observed, particularly in old-age shelterbelts, which was attributed to increased fragmentation and mortality. A gradual increase in the extent of shelterbelt degradation was observed from the northwest to the southeast within the forest-steppe region, corresponding to areas with a drier climate. Additionally, the impact of shelterbelts on soil properties and soil cover was analyzed using four key sites and using fields and laboratory research methods. We detected a lateral uptake of substances from plowed soils into the soils of shelterbelts and vertical uptake from deep layers. The two-year observations (2020 and 2021) of soil moisture during the growing season (May–September) in two climatically contrasting forest-steppe areas revealed a more intensive accumulation of soil moisture in fields west of shelterbelts compared to those to the east of them, particularly within the 10 m zone near the shelterbelts. This can be attributed to arable fields on the windward side receiving more moisture compared to the leeward side. The formation of striped microstructures in the soil cover that occurred under the shelterbelts and on adjacent arable lands was influenced by various factors such as microclimatic conditions, vegetation types, ecological conditions for soil fauna, and human-induced soil processing and transformation along the shelterbelt boundaries. Shelterbelts and their adjacent areas in agro-landscapes are considered to be self-developing natural–anthropogenic geosystems with their own organizational structure. Therefore, their study is recommended as an integral part of modern geographical zoning.

The aim of the work was to conduct an agro-ecological assessment of agricultural lands, select a typical test area by key indicators, and conduct a comprehensive analysis with the mapping of the utilisation efficiency of this area. The aim of this work was to demonstrate the fundamental possibility of solving socio-economic and environmental problems of the land use in the context of reforming the land and property complex by the example of a specific project. The algorithm of the land management actions for efficient economic use of the territory of the key site has been offered. The proposed measures are based on the organisation of an arable land with the allocation of field, grain-grass and soil-protective crop rotations, grassing-down of spillways, and conservation of a low-productive arable land, design of a field-protective forest range, determination of the type of use of natural forage lands, allocation of places for the implementation of erosion-hazardous agricultural land afforestation, organisation of a bee park, clumps of broadleaves and micro-reserves. The prospectivity of transition from a spatial object of lands assessment to their agro-ecological type by means of morphometric analysis of the terrain using GIS-technologies, calculation of territory roughness, determination of the erosion potential of the terrain, and complex integration of the results into the typification of agro-climatic resources has been proved. The prospectivity of use of soil-recovering effects for the development of new models of resource-saving sustainable agriculture has been demonstrated.