Method for the evaluation of mitigation measures for soil loss compensation based on cadstral data

Abstract

Agricultural soils are a non-renewable natural resource, and substitute land can only be acquired at the cost of losing other resources, such as forest ecosystems or restoring degraded land. An alternative is to improve soils of poorer quality through topsoil application and meliorative measures, thus increasing the production potential of existing agricultural land. In this paper, we present the measure of topsoil addition for maintaining production potential and the method of calculating the agricultural land equivalent (EKZ) to evaluate the impact of topsoil addition. The EKZ method was tested on hydromorphic and automorphic soils and on fragmented and consolidated agricultural land. The examples of EKZ calculation presented show that the addition of fertile topsoil can be an appropriate measure to mitigate the effects of soil sealing on the loss of production potential of agricultural land but not to the same extent for all soil types. The effect is greater when we improve low-quality soils such as gley soils or shallow soils with coarse particles. The EKZ method is objective, taking into account the original extent, land rating value, shape, and fragmentation of soils, as well as soils after topsoil has been added. The method also supports the rational use of the removed fertile soil and thus the conservation of a non- renewable natural resource.