Soils of Alpine, Subalpine Meadows and Meadow Steppes of Azerbaijan and the Peculiarities of Their Assimilation Potential in Relation to Organic Pollutants

Abstract

Azerbaijan is a country with a huge range of different soil types, which is due to its geographical location. The country is located in two climatic thermal zones, subboreal and subtropical, characterized by a peculiar hydrothermal regime, diverse vegetation and soil fauna. For proper zoning of the soil cover of bioclimatic landscape zones and the development of effective organization of management systems, assessment of assimilation potential is of great importance, i.e. self-cleaning potential. The purpose of our research was to assess the actual assimilation capacity and self-cleaning ability of alpine and subalpine meadow soils and meadow steppes in case of their contamination with organic pollutants based on a comprehensive system analysis of biogenic and abiogenic factors. The collected material was comprehensively analyzed from the standpoint of the biogenicity and self-purification capacity of soils of various bioclimatic landscape zones from the standpoint of the danger of soil contamination with organic matter, based on the natural features of the soil and biogenic and abiogenic factors, and appropriately grouped according to the landscape feature. The analysis of the obtained data allows us to position the soils of the Alpine and subalpine meadows and meadow steppes on the growth of the assimilation potential in relation to organic pollutants in the following sequence:

Mountain-meadow chernozem-like> Mountain-forest meadow> Mountain-meadow steppe> Mountain-meadow sod