Soil water management in the Siberian Kulunda-dry steppe

From 1954 to 1963, approximately 42 million ha of the Southern Russian steppe, of which 6.2 million ha are located in Western Siberia, were converted into large-scale intensive agricultural area. The affected areas are highly vulnerable to wind erosion and the presently ongoing climate change effect. The establishment of sustainable land management practices is essential to secure agricultural production and the further economic development of the region. The assessment and management of the soil water is of great importance for crop yield potentials and protection against wind erosion. The paper presents a meteorological and soil hydrological measuring network. The results showed that the No-Tillage technology gradually formed soil conditions close to the natural dry steppe background. Furthermore, the installed techniques can be used to measure the parameter “actual evapotranspiration” which is a key factor to evaluate climate change impacts.