The paper analyzes the problems of carbon stocks variation in the pool of cropland mineral soils at the regional scale of the Russian Federation. The carbon stock balance of cropland soils was ...evaluated by estimating carbon gains and losses, and then the components of the carbon footprint were measured as a ratio of soil organic carbon balance to crop production quantity in terms of grain equivalent (t C/t grain eq.). The estimates for the period 2011–2020 have revealed that there is generally a small net gain of carbon on cropland in Russia, mainly due to the intake of carbon from plant residues. Most of the steppe region of Russia suffers from net losses of carbon at levels from –0.15 t C/t grain eq. up to –0.69 t C/t grain eq. In other regions, such as the Central Chernozem and Black Sea Coast regions, net carbon gain is observed in the range of 0.1–0.3 t C/t grain eq. due to the intake of significant biomass of crop and root residues as a consequence of intensive crop production.
The soil cover inside the walls of the New Jerusalem Monastery (in the city of Istra, Moscow region) has been completely transformed during the long history of anthropogenic loads on the local ...landscape. Specific anthropogenic soils have been formed from the technogenic deposits on the top and slopes of the monastery hill. These soils contain numerous artifacts; in their upper part, horizons with characteristic features of the modern humus-accumulative process have been developed. The major types of anthropogenic soils on the territory of the monastery—urbiagrostratozems, soddy urbistratozems, and soddy-calcareous urbistratified soils—have been described. The composition of technogenic deposits determines the shift of pH values towards the alkaline reaction, the high content of available phosphorus compounds, and the soil contamination with heavy metals. The post-alluvial gray-humus soils close in their morphology and chemical properties to the natural soils of the floodplain predominate in the soil cover of the park zone adjacent to the walls of the monastery in the Istra River valley.
