Soils of the Baikal region: Mapping, use, transformation

The article gives a brief overview of the soil cartographic work carried out in the Baikal region. The paper contains one of the authors' map of agroecological zoning of soils of the Irkutsk region. A fragment of the legend is shown. Suitable and unsuitable districts for their use in agriculture have been identified. Various types of business activities are recommended. Also provided are maps of the use of land of the most developed part of the lands of the Baikal region in 1980 and 2023. In the Irkutsk-Cheremkhov plain with neighboring steppe areas, occupying 11% of the area of the region where the bulk of the farmland is located, relatively good natural and climatic conditions are noted. With the collapse of collective farms and state farms since the 1990s. More than 50% of former agricultural land was abandoned. A positive aspect of the "resetting" of the state system is the emergence of a reserve of agricultural land for use in the form of abandoned land with soils that have restored the level of fertility. The authors proposed a scale of qualitative assessment of the possibility of using land in agriculture, developed an assessment of the state of soil fertility, taking into account their regional characteristics.