Land reclamation is a complex of technical and organizational and economic measures aimed at improving soil, agroclimatic and hydrological conditions to increase the high return on land use in order to obtain stable and high crop yields.
The use of reclamation works contributes to changes in the complex of natural conditions (hydrological and soil) in large areas in the right direction for human activities. Land reclamation allows you to create optimal thermal, air, food conditions for the development of flora and fauna, and also has a positive impact on the natural environment and terrain.
Land reclamation measures include irrigation and drainage of the soil (irrigation), control of rivers and surface water, fortification of unstable ravines and loose sands, a fundamental change in the chemical composition of the soil (salted gypsum and liming of acidic soils), as well as soil clearing from stones. The use of land reclamation makes it possible to increase the productivity of land resources, which is of great importance in the development of agriculture, since it improves productivity, the forage base of animal husbandry, and contributes to the development of new wetland or desert lands.
There are four types of land reclamation: hydromelioration, agroforestry, cultural and technical reclamation, chemical land reclamation. In turn, they are divided into species.
Reclamation is irrigation, drainage, flood control, anti-salt, anti-erosion, anti-landslide.
Agroforestry can be anti-erosion, field protection, pasture protection.
Cultural technical land reclamation is divided into land clearing from grass, trees, moss, humps, stumps; cleaning from stones and other objects; reclamation treatment of solonetzes; sanding, loosening, planting, tilling, claying and primary tillage; as well as other activities.
Types of chemical reclamation are: gypsum, phosphorizing, liming.
Reclamation gives the most tangible result with the integrated use of all or its individual types. Also, its effectiveness depends on the methods used and cultural work. The complex of land reclamation works for a certain territory will depend on its agricultural use (cultivation technology, crop rotation, selection of varieties and crops) and type of development.
For drained zones, the best indicator of humidity is provided by its bilateral regulation. For this, drainage and humidification complexes are being built combining irrigation with drainage, using the method of water drainage during heavy rainfall and spring and irrigation of the territory in dry time. At the same time as such systems, a collector-drainage network is being built in irrigated areas, which does not allow a strong rise in groundwater and controls saline soils. Acidic soils are subjected to liming.
Land reclamation leads to an improvement in climate, especially in arid areas, since air humidity increases during irrigation in the surface layer (due to moisture evaporating from the vegetation cover and soil). This in turn causes a drop in temperature and mitigates the effects of droughts.
Usually land reclamation covers hundreds of thousands of hectares of land. This feature entails the importance of choosing a system of land reclamation works on a scientific basis, which will not entail a negative impact on nature and its resources. To create a project for land reclamation in the territory, first a complex of geological, topographic, geodesic, hydrogeological, climatological, geobotanical, soil and other studies are performed.