We studied cropland’s soil fertility changes and soil degradation levels in Zuunburen soum,
Javkhlant soum and Orkhon soum using previous studies results and our field surveys. The study
soums are located in forest-steppe ecological zone in Mongolia. There is approximately 36991.7
ha cropland was studied, of which 55.1 percent of total land was degraded somehow. In details,
the total degraded land’s 49.4 percent is degraded slightly, 32.3 percent is degraded moderately,
and 18.3 percent is degraded severely. Also, we compared the degraded land’s soil fertility
indicators with virgin land and non-degraded land. Moreover, we conducted ANOVA analysis to
the cropland’s soil quality.
The study results shows us, soil humus content is 2.61% in the non-degraded land, 2.47 %
in the slightly degraded land, 2.14 % in the moderately degrade land, and 1.48% in the severely
degraded land. Comparing with severely degraded land’s soil humus content and non-degraded
land’s soil humus, soil humus was decreased strongly (F: 6.70, p<0.01).
