Application of caesium-137 of Chernobyl origin for calculating erosional losses of soil in plowed soil areas in the upper Oka Basin

Abstract

The introduction of the principles of adaptive (precision) farming into the practice of land use makes it relevant to develop methods for calculating soil losses by morphometric indicators of the relief for plowed slopes with a complex surface. The paper considers the possibilities of applying the radiocesium method to the calculation of soil losses due to erosion in areas of agricultural fields with plowed soils. The purpose of the work is to develop a methodology for calculating erosional soil losses by the specific activity of caesium-137 (as an indicator of soil losses) depending on the morphometric indicators of the relief (calculated by GIS tools) for a local experimental site of an agricultural field, the soils on which are classified as plowed. The experimental site is located on an agricultural field, which is in the basin of the Sukhaya Orlitsa River in the Orel District, Orel Region. The article presents the results of approbation of the calculated dependence (previously developed for depressions with a watershed area of 50,000 m²) for a site with plowed soils. It is stated that the calculation according to the tested equation gives large errors. The authors proposed an original dependence of the activity of cesium-137 on the collection area, calculated in the GIS, developed for a local area with plowed soils. A check on independent material showed that the calculation error according to the original dependence did not exceed 20 % in 73 % of cases. A map of soil losses for the site of plowed soils, built in GIS based on the developed dependence, is presented.