Analysing soil hydraulic properties in the Bodrogköz region for supporting sustainable landuse

Abstract

The occurrence of extremely high floods on the Tisza River has increased during the last decades. This improved the demand on knowledge towards sustainable flood plain and water reservoir management under conditions of land use and climate change. Flood control of the Tisza River in the 19th century eliminated 2 million hectares of habitats relying on the natural regime of watercourse. On former flood areas only a fragment of the original flora and fauna could adapt to the altered circumstances (Flachner, 2004). Majority of the former flood area like the Bodrogkoz became intensively cultivated agricultural area, thus land use totally neglected ecological processes and local circumstances. The last 150 years unsustainable land use and water management lead to large scale ecological damages, land degradation, loss of biodiversity and disrupted water cycle (Flachner, 2004). The research and preliminary studies defined that flood management based on optimal land use cannot be defined without rehabilitation of the water management system of the area. Soil and groundwater protection, nature and landscape rehabilitation is based on the availability of the water and the optimal land use matched with the ecologically sound new conditions. (Botos et al., 2002) Thus, the aim of the Bodrogkoz model is that above the construction of flood water reservoirs, former flood plains should be revitalised through the rehabilitation of former river beds, while water retention and water 'steering' should be made possible by constructing the required facilities on these flood plains. The optimal level of water coverage and the water steering mechanism are modelled by the team of the Budapest Technical University (Reimann and Koncsos, 2003). The hydraulic modelling requires exact information on soil condition and soil water retention capacity. To introduce a sustainable, adopted to local natural conditions land management (Hermann et al., 2005) knowledge of soil water regime of different flood plain areas is also required. This paper introduces the soil hydraulic properties and soil water regime, characteristic for the hidromorf soils of the Bodrogkoz area.