Abstract

Soil erosion remains to be a serious problem effecting productiveness of Russian agriculture. Percentage of eroded soils in total area f arable land increases southward from 32% in forest zone to 43% in steppe zone. Such a situation clearly requires development and testing of more sustainable land management systems. It is believed that those must be based on the 2 major components: soil-protective cultivation practices and optimized erosion-preventive structure of agroforestry landscape systems. At the Novosil experimental station experiments have been carried out for more than 80 years aimed at development and improvement of complex systems of soil conservation and counter-erosion measures. Long-term (46 years) observations of spring snowmelt runoff on test parcels under different cultivation practices have been calculated and built frequency curves for runoff from arable slopes at various soil surface conditions. It has been shown that deep rough under-winter tillage is the most effective approach in terms of spring snowmelt runoff detention. Results obtained provide a necessary basis for quantitative approach to design and improvement of soil-conservational agricultural systems.

Keywords: water erosion, gullies, sustainable land management, runoff-detention cultivation practices, the Novosil experimental station.