Russian scientists have proposed a new way to combat desertification

Scientists from the Southern Federal University (SFU) have proposed an innovative approach to soil bioengineering — the reproduction of chernozem and the fight against desertification. This was reported to Izvestia on June 23 at the university.

We are talking about the environmental initiative "Creating sustainable soils for future generations of Russia." As part of this project, a group of scientists from the D.I. Ivanovsky Academy of Biology and Medicine of the Southern Federal University proposes to create a national soil bioengineering system, an interdisciplinary platform that will bring together scientists, farmers, regional authorities and technology developers.

Today in Russia, more than 56% of agricultural land is already in a state of degradation: erosion, salinization, loss of humus, compaction, and even desertification are becoming a familiar landscape in vast territories, the SFU noted. The logic of the new system will be built in three stages.

At the first stage, digital diagnostics will be carried out: the soil profile, climate zone, target crop will be analyzed, and a kind of "recipe" for the future soil system will be created.

At the second stage, production will be launched: organic waste from the agro-industrial complex will be processed into biogenic components to form a controlled microbiome.

At the third stage, the finished substrate will be applied to the degraded area, after which digital monitoring of its condition in real time will be introduced with the possibility of correcting biological activity, the SFU explained.

"Soil is a renewable resource only conditionally. Natural recovery is so slow that in practice we are dealing with an irreparable loss. Climate change is only accelerating this process: droughts are becoming more frequent, wind erosion is becoming more intense, and traditional methods of maintaining fertility in the form of fertilizers and land reclamation are no longer coping," said Tatiana Minkina, Head of the Department of Soil Science and Land Resource Assessment at the D.I. Ivanovsky Academy of Biology and Medicine at the Southern Federal University.

A fundamentally different approach is needed in the fight against desertification, and this is exactly the approach proposed in the framework of the new national environmental and climate initiative, the expert concluded.

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Science Daily magazine reported in January that scientists from the University of Texas at Austin have concluded that droughts and floods around the world are increasingly occurring synchronously and are part of a single climate process. As part of the study, scientists analyzed the total volume of water reserves, an indicator that includes water in rivers and lakes, snow and ice, soil moisture and groundwater.