Modification of the methodology for determining the amount of damage from land degradation caused by soil erosion

The purpose of the research was to modernize the “Methodology for determining the extent of damage from soil and land degradation” (Roskomzem, Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia, 1994). The modified methodology was used to calculate the economic damage from soil erosion in three key sites located in different agroecological conditions of the Russian Plain (Belgorod, Oryol, Tambov and Voronezh regions). The calculated average annual rates of soil erosion vary by 10 or more times in the sites. The difference between the area of moderately and strongly eroded soils reached 40 times in these sites. The combination of higher rates of soil erosion, a longer duration of anthropogenic erosion, and the initially relatively small thickness of the humus horizons led to a significantly larger area of moderately and strongly eroded soils in the Oryol region compared to the sites in the Belgorod, Tambov, and Voronezh regions. Studies have revealed some shortcomings of the 1994 Methodology. In this work, the 1994 Methodology was modified to calculate damage from soil and land degradation over a short (annual) period of time. Reducing the estimated period in the modified methodology to a certain extent made it possible to reduce subjective components, in particular, not to use conversion factors depending on changes in the degree of soil degradation (Kc) and depending on the time period for restoration of degraded soils (Kv). Calculation of annual damage made it possible to estimate the annual profit and income much more accurately, taking into account the composition of crops and their yield in the year of the study. In addition, the use of annual estimates has high practical significance, since this approach allows us to associate damage with the actions of a specific land user. The damage from soil erosion, calculated according to the modified method, amounted to 11–18 thousand rubles/ha per year on the site in the Oryol region, 5–6 thousand rubles/ha per year on the site in the Belgorod region and only 0.025 thousand rubles/ha per year on the site on the border of the Tambov and Voronezh regions.