Abstract
Soil salinity caused by desertification is a principal limiting factor for agriculture and lands development in Central Asia. High spatial heterogeneity of soil salinity constrains monitoring desertification and decision making on land management and soil remediation. Low-cost express methods to monitor soil salinity are highly demanded especially at the regions, where implementation of more expensive conventional measurements is constrained due to budget limitations. This research aimed to test onsite and laboratory measurements of soil electroconductivity (EC) as a proxy of soil salinity in the Hungry Steppe (Syrdarya province of Uzbekistan). Four Water Consumer Associations (WCA) with different land quality were analyzed and the EC observations were compared to the results derived from soil salinity maps. An overall satisfactory performance of the indicator was shown with an average 28% of the correctly predicted soil salinity classes. Field EC observations significantly positively correlated to the lab observations (r = 0.57; p < 0.05), but underestimated the absolute values in 66% of the cases. The best performance (53% of corrected predictions) was obtained for the Beruni WCA with the lowers land quality, therefore EC can be recommended as a relevant proxy in areas with high salinity rather than in areas with low concentrations of water-soluble salts.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
UNEP: World atlas of desertification. Edward Arnold, London (1992)
Reynolds, J.F., Stafford Smith, D.M., Lambin, E.F., Turner II, B.L., Mortimore, M., Batterbury, S.P.J., Downing, T.E., Dowlatabadi, H., Fernández, R.J., Herrick, J.E., Huber-Sannwald, E., Jiang, H., Leemans, R., Lynam, T., Maestre, F.T., Ayarza, M., Walker, B.: Ecology: global desertification: building a science for dryland development. Science 316(5826), 847–851 (2007)
Dregne, H.E.: Desertification assessment. In: Lal, R., Blum, W.H., Valentine, C., Stewart, B.A. (eds.) Method of Assessment for Soil Degradation, pp. 441–458. CRC Press, New York (1998)
Khanamani, A., Fathizad, H., Karimi, H., Shojaei, S.: Arab. J. Geosci. 10, (13) (2017)
Metternicht, G.I., Zinck, J.A.: Remote sensing of soil salinity: potentials and constraints. Remote Sens. Environ. 85, 1–20 (2003)
FAO: FAO land and plant nutrition management service (2008)
Zhao, K.F., Song, J., Feng, G., Zhao, M., Liu, J.P.: Species, types, distribution, and economic potential of halophytes in China. Plant Soil 342, 495–509 (2011)
Abdelfattah, M.A., Shahid, S.A., Othman, Y.R.: Soil salinity mapping model developed using RS and GIS – a case study from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Eur. J. Sci. Res. 26, 342–351 (2009)
Basso, F., Belloti, A., Fareta, S., Ferara, A., Marino, G., Pisante, M., Quaranta, G., Tabemer, M.: The Agri basin. In: Basso et al. Mediterranean desertification and land use. Manual on key indicators of desertification and mapping environ environmentally sensitive areas to desertification (1999). ftp://ftp.Fao.Org/agl
Grissa, M., Abdelfattah, R., Mercier, G., Zribi, M., Chahbi, A., Lili-Chabaane, Z.: Empirical model for soil salinity mapping from SAR data. In: International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), paper # 6049388, pp. 1099–1102 (2011)
Vasenev, V.I., Smagin, A.V., Ananyeva, N.D., Ivashchenko, K.V., Gavrilenko, E.G., Prokofeva, T.V., Patlseva, A., Stoorvogel, J.J., Gosse, D.D., Valentini, R.: Urban Soil’s Functions: Monitoring Assessment and Management. In: Rakshit, A., et al. (eds.) Adaptive Soil Management: From Theory to Practices, pp. 359–409. Springer Nature Singapore
Kushiev, H., Noble, A.D., Abdullaev, I., Toshbekov, U.: Remediation of abandoned saline soils using glycyrrhiza glabra: a study from the hungry steppes of central Asia. Int. J. Agric. Sustain. 3(2), 102–113 (2005)
Bichsel, C.: The drought does not cause fear. Irrigation history in Central Asia through James C. Scott’s lenses Revue d’Etudes Comparatives Est-Ouest 43(1–2), 73–108 (2012)
Soil of Uzbekistan. FAN. Tashkent (1975)
Worl reference base for soil resources 2014. Food and Agricultural Organization of United Nations. Rome
Manual for soil description. Food and Agricultural Organization of United Nations. Rome (2012)
Li, I., Cheng, Z., Paltseva, A., Morin, T., Smith, B., Shaw, R.: Lead in New York city soils. Springer Geography, Part F4, pp. 62–79 (2018)
Ivushkin, K., Bartholomeus, H., Bregt, A.K., Pulatov, A.: Satellite thermography for soil salinity assessment of cropped areas in Uzbekistan. Land Degradation Dev. 28(3), 870–877 (2017)
Acknowledgements
The publication was prepared with the support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Project # 18-54-41004 and Ministry of Innovation development of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Project # MRU-SQV 86/2017. Data analysis and mapping was supported by the RUDN project “5-100”.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Vasenev, V. et al. (2020). Soil Electroconductivity as a Proxy to Monitor the Desertification in the Hungry Steppe (Uzbekistan). In: Vasenev, V., Dovletyarova, E., Cheng, Z., Valentini, R., Calfapietra, C. (eds) Green Technologies and Infrastructure to Enhance Urban Ecosystem Services. SSC 2018. Springer Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16091-3_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16091-3_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-16090-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-16091-3
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)