SUITMA 2005 Cairo - Destruction and restoration of soils in the artillery shooting ranges of army areas
SUITMA 2005 Cairo
| This abstract is about one of the papers of the Consumed mining and military areas theme of the SUITMA 2005 symposium. |
| Pavel Novak.i |
- i - Research Institute for Soil and Water Conservation, Prague, Czech Republic.
During the Soviet occupation of former Czechoslovakia 1968 – 1990 some army areas originally small were enlarged and used by Soviet troops as active artillery and tank shooting ranges. Many military structures were built there such as emplacements of fire positions, shelters, bunkers, heliports, airports, targets, trenches and observation points. The lands especially those in shooting target areas were seriosly damaged by explosions, movements of tanks and heavy transporters, overlays of subsoil materials containing shell splinters. Original soils and vegetation cover were seriosly damaged and in some places virtually destroyed.
After the end of the Cold War and after the exodus of Soviet military troops in 1991 some of these army areas were oficially closed down and gradually returned to non-military land use. They were carefully cleaned of all rests of ammunition and other explosive and dangerous materials. In parallel to the cleaning both the soil and land surveys were carried out aiming to specify the extent of totally destroyed and partly damaged lands, the extent of possible pollution by heavy metals and locally by oil products and other chemical contaminants, those typically occurring in barrack areas and machinery centers.
This paper describes the process of soil restoration and re-development of the landscape on the example of a former largest army area Ralsko (more than 280 km2), 80 km north-east from Prague.
The original soils in the area were mostly Arenic and Dystric Cambisols, Eutic and Haplic Podzols, Arenosols and Regosols on poor quartz sand or on its mixtures with eolic sediments. The extent of destroyed and seriously damaged lands was assessed from the time sequence of aerial photos and supplemented by the soil survey on the spot.
In the whole territory there were only very few places polluted with oil or chemicals. These have been technologically decontaminated during the period 1991 – 2005. After the removal of explosive materials the largest part of the former shooting ranges was let to spontaneous re-development of vegetation, wild animals etc, without any significant human influence. The agricultural use, reforestration or any other land use would be hazardeous, considering the possible occurence of undiscovered rests of explosives. During the 15 years a great progress has been observed in terms of the spontaneous development of vegetation, the vitality of ecosystems and the creation of new soil profiles.
The following results are presented in the paper:
- Appearance of the shooting ranges in 1991 (aerial photos)
- Schematic images of lands of the target areas destroyed or damaged in various degrees (obtained by the soil and land survey)
- Contents of heavy metals and shell splinters in these areas
- Description of genesis of initial podzols on the overlaying materials
- Account of the spontaneous development of natural vegetation
Obviously the soil development and the other processed described in this study correspond to the geological, geomorphological and climatic conditions of Central Europe. These results could be hardly applied to other regions with different ones.
