Abstract
Land degradation by soil erosion, gullying and landslides and reservoir sedimentation is a major environmental threat in the Moldavian Plateau of eastern Romania. The widespread development of these processes in the last two centuries was favored mainly by traditional agriculture focused on ‘up-and-down slope’ farming on small plots. However, soil conservation measures were actively undertaken between 1970 and 1989. More recent legislation (No. 18/1991 Agricultural Real Estate Act) includes two provisions that discourage maintaining and extending soil conservation practices. Hence, the former contour farming system has been abandoned in favor of the traditional, inadequate farming methods. Thus, this paper reviews the impact of land degradation and soil conservation measures in a representative 32,908 ha catchment located in the Central Moldavian Plateau. Based on field measurements, the results show that the estimated mean long-term (1973–2017) sedimentation rate reaches 4.7 cm y−1 in the Puscasi Reservoir at the catchment outlet, resulting in an associated sediment delivery ratio of 0.28. The initial area of the Puscasi Reservoir at normal retention level has decreased by 32% and the water storage capacity has decreased by 39%. Consequently, land degradation remains a serious problem in the study area and effective soil conservation is urgently needed.
Highlights
Land degradation by soil erosion, gully erosion and mass movements is an important environmental threat throughout the world and poses major challenges to soil conservation measures
Land degradation has been recognized as the major cause of environmental degradation worldwide [69,70] and, in particular, in the Moldavian Plateau (MP) of eastern Romania
This area is highly susceptible to soil erosion [71], gullying [72] and landslides [73], which damage the local landscape by depleting soil resources and decreasing agricultural productivity
Summary
Land degradation by soil erosion, gully erosion and mass movements is an important environmental threat throughout the world and poses major challenges to soil conservation measures. Significant progress has been made in understanding land degradation, its controlling factors and associated processes. A lot of papers focus on quantitative assessment, using direct field measurements related to specific events [9], field plots [10] or modelling using GIS techniques [11]. Research papers focus on specific issues regarding control factors such as climate change, land use, ecosystem pattern, [12,13] or the effects of erosion control measures [14,15,16]. A lot of research works developed in former communist countries from central-eastern
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