THE EFFICIENCY OF DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO SOIL EROSION CONTROL IN SELECTED AREAS OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Erosion due to intensive agriculture is the most serious world-wide degradation factor of soil on sloping land; within Europe human-induced soil degradation by water erosion now affects more than 100 million hectares of agricultural land. In the Czech Republic this endangers roughly 54% of arable land. This paper focuses on analysis of erosion processes on agricultural land in 4 cadastral areas of the Czech Republic and on possible scenarios for solution of this problem. In the chosen regions we first calculated the long-term soil erosion without any soil protection. In this case erosion was several times in excess of tolerable erosion values. Consequently, we evaluated the efficiency of standards implemented according to Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC) (EC REG. No 1782/2003, EC Reg. 73/2009 and material from the Czech Ministry of Agriculture Inspection of conditionality Cross compliance from 2010), in two variants of strictness. These standards are purely agronomic measures. Another scenario consisted of a proposal of soil erosion control using surface and linear measures (soaking belts, drainage and catchment furrows and stabilization of concentrated drainage tracks). A detailed evaluation of individual scenarios shows insufficient soil protection within the two types of GAEC management of soil, as the efficiency of these measures was between 13.6% and 42.9% in comparison with the current situation without soil erosion control. Significantly higher efficiency, ranging between 40.9% and 73.4%, was achieved within a soil erosion control (SEC) management system using both surface and linear measures. In comparison with the requirements stated in the Cross-compliance system (GAEC I and II) the proposal of overall and linear measures fundamentally reduces soil loss by water erosion. The results of the comparison of different scenarios of soil erosion control can help in proposing a new concept of soil protection on cultivated land.