Albania is known for having a considerable area of ultramafic soils, which are mainly located on the southeastern part of the country. The major part of this area is under intensive research aiming the recognition of status and its behavior above of all, and after, finding out the best ways and practices to improve the soil productivity. This is also, firstly, in fact, the broad aim of the research undertaken by our research team and presented in this article. Secondly, the more concrete aim is to determine, in real magnitudes, the capacity of these very specific soils to resist to erosion, which is a very widespread and dangerous phenomenon in the area where this type of soils occur naturally. That is why, the relationships existing between the erodibility index, K, and the textural factors, particularly clay and silt contents in ultramafic substrates (serpentines), is also at the centre of this study. The most typical ultramafic soils in Albania are considered to be the “ground” to determine these relationships. For each soil under consideration, the soil texture, organic matter, soil structure and soil permeability are determined experimentally. The above-mentioned measurements were used to calculate the erodibility factor for every single soil under consideration, by applying the Wischmeier equation. After, the erodibility factor, K, already determined, was considered, theoretically at least, as affected by the relative presence of clay and silt particles in soil. In order to determine this relationship quantitatively, which is believed to be a cause-effect relationship as well, the regression analysis was undertaken. The findings revealed interesting and specific relations between the erodibility factor and both: clay and silt contents, respectively. The very essential result was that the direction of dependency of soil erodibility on the clay content is the opposite of the direction of dependency of soil erodibility on the silt content. The increase of clay content in serpentines soils leads to a decrease of the soil erodibility; but the increase of silt content of the same type of soils leads to an increase of the soil erodibility.

soil erodibility, ultramafic soils, Wischmeier equation, soil texture, organic matter, soil structure, soil permeability.

sciences soil

Presentation: poster