Agricultural Landscape Quality as a Key Factor Fostering Environmentally Safe Use of Agricultural Lands in the Arid Steppe of the Altai Region

Abstract

The current economic affairs and land and property matters in Russia, its regions, and settlements require adequate approaches, methods, and mechanisms for managing, planning, and organizing safe and sustainable agricultural land use. Many landowners and land users have significantly diverse and, in some cases, inconsistent interests regarding land resources. Therefore, the new organization of the agricultural land use system should consider the commercial interests of landowners and state priorities related to the sustainable use of land resources, their conservation, and the protection of the entire natural environment based on the qualitative features of contemporary agricultural landscapes. The object of this study, the arid steppe of the Altai Krai, has long been a farming territory of great significance. Within the borders of the dry steppe, nine municipal districts of the region are located. The subject of the study is the quality of agricultural land. The zoning was carried out, considering that the studied area is included in the joint distribution of water and wind erosion. The location of agrarian land considered as the study object, exceeds 1.7 million hectares. More than 1.4 million hectares of them are designated as potentially blown lands, and about 160 thousand hectares are erosion threatening ones. The best part of the arable land surface is subject to soil degradation. Forage lands suffer from the joint occurrence of corrosion. The total number of points calculated based on agricultural land quality indicators significantly differs in municipal districts. Thus, there are different land-use sustainability of economic entities and their environmental safety.