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SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF ORGANIC SOIL UTILIZATION AND QUALITY IN LATVIA

Aleksejs Nipers

Abstract

Soils are the foundation of food production and food security. Many agricultural practices can potentially mitigate greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Managed organic soils are the largest sources of GHG emissions from agriculture. In Latvia, organic soils have been little researched to date. Therefore, the overall aim of the present research is to identify the geographical locations, quality and uses of organic soils in Latvia. To achieve the aim, the following specific research tasks are defined: 1) to analyse the geographical locations of organic soils in Latvia; 2) to identify the quality and uses of organic soils in the agricultural area in Latvia. The research, performing a spatial analysis of the data of digitalised maps of various institutions, found that in Latvia the area with hydromorphic soils accounted for 7% of the total utilised agricultural area (UAA), and the hydromorphic soils were located mainly in the eastern and northern part of the country. A considerable area having hydromorphic soils was located in utilised agricultural lands with a lower qualitative estimate than the average in Latvia. The key uses of the hydromorphic soil area were meadows and pastures, and a relatively high proportion of the area with such soils was located in the unmanaged area and the managed uncropped area. The proportion of the hydromorphic soil area for intensive land uses was low.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2019/5.3/s21.086

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