CURRENT STATE OF SOIL AND VEGETATION COVER OF THE ESTUARY OF THE NORTHERN PART OF THE BARABA LOWLAND

Purpose: to study the current state of the soil and vegetation cover of the lands irrigated by the reclamation system “Estuary Irrigation, Pushchikha tract” as a means of agricultural production. Materials and methods. The object of study is located in the Kuibyshevsky district Novosibirsk region, in geomorphological terms – in the northern part of the Baraba lowland. The choice of sites, collection and sample preparation, as well as physical-chemical analyzes and statistical processing were carried out by the standard methods. Results and discussion. It is shown that in the upland positions the vegetation cover is represented by meadow communities with a total projective cover of 95 %. The aboveground phytomass is on average 32.2 c/ha for green mass; 55.4 c/ha is plant litter. The soil cover is represented by ordinary chernozems of medium depth and solonetz gley meadow-chernozem solonchak low-sodium medium. In the main part of the estuary, the vegetation cover is represented by meadow-bog communities with a total projective cover of 98 %. The aboveground phytomass is 60.2 c/ha for green mass and 43.3 c/ha for litter. The soil cover is represented by meadow-bog ordinary and meadow-bog eluvial-gley soils. The humus content in them is high, amounting to 14.7 %; neutral and close to neutral reaction of the environment is characteristic. In terms of the content of the silt fraction, the studied soils are barely distinguishable, while the difference in the content of calcium and magnesium is clearly visible. Conclusions. The territory of the estuary irrigation of the “Pushchikha” tract, which has existed for decades, including in a neglective state, is very valuable for the further use of these lands as highly productive hayfields.