An Anthropogenic Soil Disturbance Map of Russia

Abstract

Soils play an important role in maintaining sustainability of the biosphere, and they provide food, clothing, and the basis for human life on the Earth. Irrational land use often results in soil degradation and, sometimes, to its complete destruction. However, an inventory of destroyed soils has not yet been conducted systematically in any country of the world. In Russia, the traditional soil maps do not show destroyed soils either. We have made an attempt to create the first map of Russia to show soils destroyed as a result of a directed anthropogenic impact. It maps the areas where the soil cover was destroyed due to construction of buildings, facilities, motor and rail roads, mining quarries, and embankments. The OpenStreetMap crowdsourcing database has been used as the main information source. In addition, the results of the visual interpretation obtained for disturbed soils from the GoogleEarth^TM satellite data were applied. The disturbed soil data were aggregated into soil–geographic units of the Unified State Register of Soil Resources of Russia (scale 1 : 2 500 000) (USRSR). The map is presented in the GIS format (shapefile). It specifies the area and the proportion of disturbed soils, as well as the type of impact resulting in such a disturbance.