Soil Formation on Sugar Industry Waste in the Central Chernozemic Zone

Abstract

Soils formed in treatment facilities of sugar beet factories in the forest-steppe zone of Kursk oblast were studied. Technogenic factors of soil formation associated with the industrial sugar beet activity and post-technogenic processes during the abandonment of treatment facilities are considered. The alternation of settling ponds and the earth walls separating them are the main factors determining “cellular” pattern of the soil cover. The mode of inflow and discharge and the composition of wastewater, as well as the duration of the abandonment of settling ponds determine the specifics of soils forming in the bottoms of the ponds. Mucky–humus quasi-gley stratified soils (Calcaric Gleysol) are formed in operating settling ponds under the periodic impact of sewage mixed with other wastes. When calcareous sewage sludge (press mud) is previously removed from abandoned ponds, dark-humus quasi-gley soils (Gleyic Cambisol) are formed in 30 years in the presence of perched water table, and quasi-gley zooturbated Chernozems are developed in 40 years under the conditions of periodic moistening. Soil formation in settling ponds with preserved sewage sludge and abandoned 20 years ago is noticeably intensive only in the upper 10–15 cm, and properties of the stratified sediment are preserved below. Dark-humus technogenic artistratified soils (Spolic Technosols) are identified there. Typical dark-humus soils (Eutric Cambisols (Organotransportic) are formed on earth walls in about 50–60 years, and incompletely developed strongly alkaline technogenic pelozems (Spolic Technosols (Transportic)) are formed on earth walls covered with calcareous sewage sludge; these soils consist of the virtually unchanged mixed material of technogenic sediments. All soils are alkaline and strongly alkaline and rich in organic matter, carbonates, phosphates, nutrients and some heavy metals from wastewater. According to the combination of properties, the soils of the sugar industry treatment facilities have no direct natural analogues in the central chernozemic region and are a vivid example of soils forming under extreme conditions of resource excess.