The quality of agricultural lands from the administrative territory of Răducaneni, Iaşi county

Abstract

Soil represents the result of action taken by various processes determined by environmental factors, continously adapting to natural and/or artificial changes of the environment, recording through certain phenomena, processes and characteristics, the main evolutionary moments. Agricultural land quality is determined by assessment, according to which, in Romania, agricultural land belongs to five quality classes differentiated based on their assessment grades. The assessment study is conducted on various agricultural lands, which should be as homogeneous as possible from the viewpoint of their environmental factors and vegetation factors. In the Răducăneni administrative-territorial unit, the 70 simple soil units and 6 complex soil units identified, belonging to the Protisoils, Cernisoils, Luvisoils, Hydrisoils and Antrisoils classes, were included, depending on their slope and exposure, in elementary land units, which resulted in 171 simple ecologically homogeneous territories and 36 complex ones. Relying on the land quality and productivity assessment grades calculated for the 207 ecologically homogeneous territories, we decided that the surveyed land belonged to the arable use category, i.e. to I, II, III, IV and V quality classes. 50.9% (3372.68 ha) of the total mapped area of 6624 ha belongs to the lower quality classes, namely IV and V, 35.1% (2323.17 ha) to the III quality class and only 14% (928.15 ha) to the higher I and II quality classes.