Monitoring researches of steppe nature management on the example of Orenburgskaya oblast: peculiarities, dynamics, prospects

Abstract

One of the urgent problems of current steppe land use is forming the unclaimed and non-demanded land fund and the chaotic, periodically fragmentary use of agricultural lands in the steppe zone. These processes demand regular monitoring to track positive or negative dynamics of impact on steppe ecosystems, agricultural production and predict variants of the development. Practically all actual problems of nature management in the region is closely interconnected; plowing and abandoning of croplands, low productivity, climate aridization, overgrazing or undergrazing of livestock and degradation of the soil-vegetation cover, bushing, and formation of wild grasses’ fallows, activation of steppe fires, the dynamics of wildlife and change of hunting resources’ amount, depopulation in the rural areas, exploitation of natural resources’ deposits – all influence on the formation the current view of the steppe zone. Actual problems of land use in the steppe zone have been examined. A comparative analysis concerning a change of the agroecological situation in the steppe region has been conducted in monitoring research for more than ten years. Despite the total recession of agricultural production in comparison with the 1990-s, the program of closedown and transfer of low-productive croplands in mowing and grazing lands was not realized, land resources continue to be exhausted, crop rotation was broken, technical crops’ acreage increases, particularly sunflower, and fertilizers are not practically added. Simultaneously, reserves to restore steppe ecosystems have remained at the expense of seed-stocks in inarable lands, ravines, gullies, hills’ slopes. A correct approach to management and maintenance of the balance in land use promotes harmonic development and the use of agro-resources in the region’s steppe zone.