Degradation and restoration of soils in the Moscow River floodplain for the last fifty years

During a short-term recent period (about 50 years), many floodplains of the Nonchernozemic zone were used as meadows, croplands for growing row crops, or they were abandoned. This was done to supply the populations of industrial cities with vegetables. In this case, the agrotechnical, ameliorative, and some other measures applied were often incompatible with the properties of the floodplain soils and caused their degradation. Among these measures was the elimination of grasses in the crop rotation, the monoculture of row crops, inadequate irrigation inducing systematic waterlogging, and the wide use of heavy agricultural machines. The consequences of using such technologies were investigated by the authors; on these soils, row crop were grown for 30 years and, for the next 20 years, the soils were left under fallow. Based on the data obtained, methods for the floodplain soils’ protection against degradation are proposed.