Land degradation is an important problem of actual society. In order to protect and conserve the environment, there is a need of an adequate knowledge of all environmental resources and of identifying the risks to which they are exposed. The objective of this paper is to identify soil salinity risk areas from Braila Plain. Researches conducted in this area, until today, have been targeted in particular to issues related to the soil and land inventory, not to the risk assessment of degradation processes. The Southern part of Romania is the region most exposed to desertification. Also, over 3/4 of the irrigated agricultural area are found here, as well as high-drained land reclaimed from the sea. At world-wide, many projects have been developed aiming at identifying anthropogenically induced soil degradation: GLASOD project (Global Assessment of the Status of Human Induced Soil Degradation), developed by UNEP-ISRIC, 1990, ASSOD project (Assessment of Human Induced Soil Degradation in South and South-Eastern Asia) undertaken by UNEP, FAO, ISRIC in 1995, SOVEUR (Mapping of Soil and Terrain Vulnerability in Central and Eastern Europe) developed by UNEP, FAO, ISRIC, 1995, and RAMSOIL – Risk Assessment Methodologies for Soil Threats. The final result consists in a map achieved by processing information from soil map 1:200 000, from the Geographic Information System SIGSTAR 200, and from several scientific papers developed in the study area. The information has been processed with the program ArcView 3.2. The results of this research could be used in several research fields, mainly the knowledge, use and improvement of agricultural land (irrigation, drainage, fertilization, amendment, and others) and the acquisition and use of a tool to base the political decisions regarding the environmental management (the location of monitoring systems in the territory, the development of a network of protected areas, the establishment of some priorities in recovery and reconstruction of damaged areas after environmental degradation).

salinisation risk; Braila Plain; soil map

Presentation: oral