The complete title and the acronym: The creation of a georeferenced database in Suceava Plateau by monitoring the damaged soils on digital images, as a decision base in ecological improvement (DEGRATER)   

The period : September 2007 - October 2009

By its thematic, the project engages in the research direction 3 - Environment from the program’s 4 structure.

Project summary :

Nowadays among the efforts for sustainable management and a reasonable usage of the resources, the preoccupations concerning the soil preservation are among the most important ones, at least from the view of the fact that the soil is an important resource of food for human beings and animals.
The soil damage, with its numerous forms (water or wind erosion, drifting processes, sloughing, soil salinization or anthropic damages) and its different intensities, lies among the cuases that can diminish the productive qualities of the soil.
Once formed/emerged, the degradation forms have to be located and studied qualitative and quantitative in order to apply the most adequate technologies of ecologic reconstruction, where a certain limit is exceled
Unlike these soil stock- takings done till now on limited areas ,sporadic, usually for some isolated damage forms of an increased intensity, using mapping methodologies and means of different accuracy and reliance, the present project aims at, developing for the division of the damaged soils on an extended geomorphologic area (the largest part of Suceava Plateau, which lies between Siret River and Moldova River and the North border of the country), unitary methodologies of a better efficaciousness and reliability, based on digital images of the soil.
Thus, in a first state, there will be bought for areas established by us as being representative for the types of damage mentioned above, the digital images delivered in the past years (2004-2005), when there were elaborated orthorectified plans of the whole country territory (the system of identification of the agricultural plots LPIS - Land Parcel Identification System). These images are georeferenced, being available at the National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration Bucharest, as well as at the representatives from the territory (The Offices for Cadastre and Land Publicity).
On the orthorectified plans there will be outlined, according to the image’s characteristics (grey level and texture), the types of damage will be analyzed then by comparing them to the field data. We expect to obtain though keys of photo interpretation, correlated with different damage situations, which will be an important auxiliary in identifying the degradation types. Thus we estimate that by the extrapolation of these observations, the processes of damage will be mapped on the orthorectified plans from the whole research area.
A second approach of the matter will be done beginning with the digital images of the terrain/area resulted from satellite images of high spatial resolution. Such products present advantages against the former ones, from which we can mention the taking of the image in more spectral channels( green, blue, red and infrared), which are able to combine in order to reach optimum combinations in distinguishing the analyzed processes.
In order to do this we will buy in 2009 satellite images for an area that we are going to establish, based on the former results, we’ll analyze and locate the processes of soils damage and verify the results on the field.
The whole area covered by georeferenced satellite images will be overlapped on the plan at 1:5.000, plans done by stereoanalise based on the flights from 1979. On the scanned plans we will delimitate/locate the forms of gully erosion (ravine, torrents), being able though to start up an analysis of their evolution in 1979 – 2009. The georeferenced data base thus obtained represents a base for the technical-sylvicultural measures.
The design of the technical solutions for the ecological reconstruction in land improving perimeters contains specific activities of risks evaluation, natural rectifying and ecologic reconstruction, selection of the technical solutions, designing of the reconstruction technologies, evaluation of the achievement chances and of the ecologic and economic impact.

Relevance:

By its thematic, the project engages in the research direction 3- Environment from the program’s 4 structure. The solving of the theme has been thought in partnership with universities, research units and economic agents.
We think that the general objective of the program 4- partnerships in the precedent fields, to create new innovative technologies to solve some complex matters, in fulfilled, because:
- the matters about the soil damage are of present interest in our country;
- we suggest a new method, an unitary one, of cognition and mapping of the soil damage processes, with a high rank of generalization. This methodology is based on satellite images of the area, which are relatively new products in the study of the terrestrial processes;
- the matter of the damage forms mapping in Suceava Plateau and the creation of a georeferenced data base is complex because of the size of the studied area, the intensity and diversity of the damaging forms (water erosion, landslides, soil salinization, sloughing or anthropic interventions);
- the improvement techniques suggested for some damaged perimeters enlarge the activity area and the project’s complexity
The project, by the way in which it was thought, rejoins to some derived objectives of the program, as:
- the substantiation and development of technologies for the preservation, reconstruction and consolidation of the biologic diversity as it is known from the specialty literature that these ones decrease as the vegetation conditions worsen, linked for sure by the state of the terrain and soil’s characteristics;
- the development of the knowledge in the sustainable management is being done by means of the already used work instruments and the unitary method used for intended areas. The permanency is also given by the fact that the data base, once created in SIG, can be used on a long term by adding adequate completions related somehow to the evolution of one of the damaging forms.

The goal of the suggested project is to create a georeferenced data base of the soil damage forms, which will be an objective support of taking decisions in the activities of ecologic improvement on a territorial administrative unit (village, town council), Agricultural Departments or the Territorial Sylvicultural Inspectorates .

The data base may be useful too in preventive decision taking, for the appearance or especially of the development of some damaging processes. By the partnerships done the competence of the parts was diversified and by the stipulated way of the results’ dissemination the method might be known, appreciated and used in other areas too.