Resource-saving efficiency of agroforestry in areas prone to deflation and desertification

Abstract

Natural disasters and climate change have significantly reduced the land fund of Russia. In recent years, it has decreased several times. Among the various means of land reclamation, agroforestry is singled out as the most effective means of preventing deflation and desertification of agricultural land. Protective forest stands in arid areas dramatically change the environmental conditions of the environment, in particular the properties and fertility of soils. Forest reclamation increases the forest-growing effect and crop yields. To study further on this, this study was conducted during 2021-22 at the Laboratory of Mathematical Modelling of the Federal Scientific Center of Agroecology, Complex Melioration and Protective Afforestation of the Russian Academy of Sciences, located in the Volgograd region (Russia), to reveal the resource-saving role of forest strips. To do this, we compared a typical variant of agroforestry and the optimal variant of agroforestry, which ensured sustainable land use. These options were used to study the costs that are necessary for the creation and cultivation of forest plantations and their potential benefits in the form of prevented damage from deflation and desertification of land. A comparison of the resource-saving benefits obtained through forest-reclamation of arable land with the costs required for this arrangement showed that the benefits of agroforestry in protecting land from degradation were several times higher than the costs and indicated the feasibility of measures in the region.