PJA     
      ZESZYT Nr  1/ 2009    Abstrakty
      Volume No. 1/2009     Abstracts

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9. An implementation of environmental databases for physical modeling of water balance and land degradation
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Tomasz Stuczyński, Artur Łopatka, Bernadetta Zawadzka, Grzegorz Siebielec

Abstract.

There is an increasing demand for the rapid and quantitative assessment of different aspects of environmental quality.
This is associated with the need for a more effi cient and sustainable use of existing resources. It is well established that water deficit is a limiting factor of various soil functions in Poland as sixty percent of soil cover represents a coarse texture of poor water holding capacity. Increasing water retention within the landscape becomes one of the objectives for land management and related policy. This requires a spatial assessment of water reten-
tion characteristics and of the soil cover. In post-industrial areas in addition water defi ciency impacts on crops and ecosystem can be enhanced by land degradation and contamination. Identifi cation of these processes requires either traditional measurement or application of modeling tools as an alternative. The benefit of modeling is reduction of cost, however these methods can introduce a larger uncertainty to the assessment comparing to traditional surveys. 

This paper addresses our preliminary results of alternative techniques for modeling of water balance in soils as well as identifi cation of potentially contaminated areas through
remote sensing. Topics presented here belong to set of tools our group has been developing in recent years showing a potential of digital data bases and satellite images for identifi cation of major threats to soil functions such as water defi cit and contamination.
These two land quality assessment methodologies are discussed in this paper to demonstrate alternatives for a better management and protection of environmental resources.

key words: environmental databases, modeling, water balance, soil contamination