Organization of sustainable management of meadows in the Nonchernozem belt of the Russian Federation

Abstract

Relevance and methodology. Meadow communities forming in various ecological regimes, participate in the biogeochemical carbon cycle, accumulating and retaining it, removing it from the atmospheric air. A significant part of the natural meadows in the old-developed region is intensively exploited and loses carbondepositing functions. The sustainable management of meadows under intensive exploitation provides for the organization of their restoration and optimal exploitation. In field and office work, the method of trial plots, ecological analytical methods with the determination of organic carbon in the composition of soil humus, the method of phytocenotic analogs, the weight method, and a number of statistical methods were used.

Results. The research of the dynamics of the carbon content of above- and underground biomass, soil of three meadows types, showed a favourable effect of restoration processes on the organic carbon content of soils, the growth of biomass and productivity. The long-flooded meadows turned out to be the most responsive to restoration processes. However, the increase in the amount of aboveground and underground biomass in meadows, the productivity of meadows also increased for all types of meadows by the age of 5 years, and then decreased. The following monitoring indicators to diagnose the progress of recovery processes in meadow ecosystems are recommended: root biomass, leaf area index and content of labile organic matter. Therefore, when planning the management of meadows during restoration successions, it is necessary to provide for a moderate pasture load with 4–5 years of restoration processes. Planning the use of meadows, it is necessary to provide for a combination of sequestration and deposit processes of organic carbon, which is a way to increase or preserve the humus content of soils, preserve crop yields, and reduce CO₂ emissions into the atmospheric air.