SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF LAND RESOURCES IN THE CONTEXT OF AGRICULTURAL POLICY IN THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA

Tama­ra LEAH
”NICOLAE DIMO” INSTITUTE OF SOIL SCIENCE, AGROCHEMISTRY AND SOIL PROTECTION
Cor­re­spond­ing author e‑mail: tamaraleah09 @ gmail.com
Abstract: Nat­ur­al and anthro­pogenic con­di­tions deter­mine the inten­si­ty and direc­tion of pedo­ge­n­e­sis, as well as the nature and degree of degra­da­tion of the soil cov­er of the Repub­lic of Moldo­va. Depend­ing on the com­bi­na­tion of nat­ur­al and anthro­pogenic fac­tors, the forms of land degra­da­tion are expand. The main nat­ur­al fac­tors of land degra­da­tion are: qua­ter­nary deposits, rep­re­sent­ed by loess clay, ancient and mod­ern allu­vial deposits of dif­fer­ent gran­u­lo­met­ric com­po­si­tions, from clays to sands; parental rocks; the pres­ence of sev­en oro­graph­ic units in a restrict­ed area. The most com­mon exoge­nous process­es lead­ing to land degra­da­tion are: ero­sion, land­slide, pro­lu­vio-delu­vial, avalanche, fusion and karst process. The evo­lu­tion of the bal­ance of organ­ic mat­ter in arable soils became neg­a­tive. In a peri­od of 150 years, the cher­nozems lost up to 50% of their ini­tial humus con­tent. The annu­al loss­es of organ­ic mat­ter through decom­po­si­tion are on aver­age 600–700 kg/ha, in the last 20 years – 900 kg/ha. The tor­ren­tial nature of the pre­cip­i­ta­tion in the con­di­tions of a frag­ment­ed relief con­tributes to the inten­sive devel­op­ment of land ero­sion and the man­i­fes­ta­tion of dif­fer­ent forms of soil degra­da­tion. The arid char­ac­ter of the cli­mate, the fre­quent dry peri­ods (droughts), the pre­dis­po­si­tion of the ter­ri­to­ry to the man­i­fes­ta­tion of deser­ti­fi­ca­tion process­es, require the adap­ta­tion of agri­cul­ture to these con­di­tions.
Key­words: land degra­da­tion, land resources, sus­tain­able man­age­ment, agri­cul­tur­al pol­i­cy. 
JEL clas­si­fi­ca­tion: Q1, Q15