RECOVERY OF THE HUMUS STATE OF THE STEPPE CHERNOZEMS UNDER THE CONDITIONS OF THE DEPOSIT
In the middle of the last century, in order to provide the country’s population with food products, the country began implementing the plan for extensive development of agricultural production. Only in the Orenburg region from 1954 to 1962, about 2,2 million hectares of virgin and fallow lands were plowed up, and the total area of arable land reached 6,4 million hectares. Along with serious miscalculations in the technology of growing the main crops, excessive plowing of steppe chernozems caused the development of a number of degradation processes, such as dehumification, de-structuring, over consolidation, soil erosion, which was accompanied by a progressive decrease in their fertility. However, at the end of the twentieth century, significant political and economic changes took place in the country, affecting the agricultural production sector. One of his results was the transfer of more than two million hectares into the deposit. Thus, for the first time in the agricultural period, previously arable land was found in an unprecedented natural experiment on the natural restoration of chernozems. This article is devoted to the study of the humus state of steppe chernozems in the conditions of the deposit. The more than 20-year period of soil restoration led to a change in the humus content from 2,79% to 4,1%, its reserves to 88,9% of that of the virgin land, an increase in the proportion of humic acids to 39,6% and a humification depth of 2,33. The studies made it possible to conclude that the system of indicators of humus condition of soils showed high sensitivity to cessation of arable use and can be recommended as a diagnostic indicator for assessing the degree of natural restoration of the soil cover of the steppe.