Susceptibility of soils to physical degradation in Hungary

Abstract A simple category system was elaborated by the authors expressing the susceptibility of Hungarian soils to physical degradation, as structure destruction and compaction. The main soil characteristics which were taken into consideration in the category system were as follows: type, subtype and local variant of the soil, parent material, texture, hydro-physical properties, carbonate-, salinity/alkalinity- and organic matter status, and depth of the soil. Based on detailed territorial information on the above mentioned soil characteristics Hungarian soils were classified into 8 physical degradation sensitivity (susceptibility) categories: 1. 1. Non-susceptible soils; 2. 2. Slightly susceptible soils; 3. 3. Moderately susceptible soils; 4. 4. Soils susceptible to compaction and surface crusting, but not to structure destruction; 5. 5. Soils susceptible to both structure destruction and compaction; 6. 6. Soils susceptible to both structure destruction and compaction due to salinity and/or alkalinity; 7. 7. Organic soils; 8. 8. Shallow soils (solid rock or cemented layer near to the surface). The map of these categories was prepared in the scale of 1:500 000. For medium (1:100 000) and large-scale (1:25 000 - 1:10 000) mapping a more detailed category-system (including more categories and subcategories with precise numerical limit values) will be elaborated.