Plekhanova L.N. ANTHROPOGENIC DEGRADATION OF SOILS OF RIVER TERRACES IN VOLGA-URAL REGION DURING THE BRONZE AGE AND ITS IMPACT ON THE MODERN SOIL AND VEGETATION COVER // Arid ecosystems. 2019. V. 25. № 3 (80). P. 53-59. | PDF

Anthropogenic activities during the Bronze Age had a significant impact on the transformation of soils and landscapes of Volga-Ural steppes. The soils around ancient settlements suffered that impact most of all. Over-grazing and following degradation of vegetation cover, including soils erosion, determined the development of soil and vegetation covers and micro-landscape combinations, non-typical for steppe region. The detected examples of salt-marshes evolution in micro-depressions, and zonal soils in micro-elevations were detected only one kilometer around many settlements of the Late Bronze Age in the boundaries of steppe zone of Chelyabinsk, Orenburg and Samara regions. We offer a hypothesis of the forming of particular anthropogenic complexity of soil and vegetation covers, the process of which had started in the second millennium BC.

Keywords: anthropogenic impact, Bronze Age, ecosystems, steppe zone, settlements, buried soil, inversions, complexity, over-grazing, low terraces above the floodplain.

DOI: 10.24411/1993-3916-2019-10065