Soil

This must be achieved through specific measures in soil protection and management policies, and by integrating soil protection issues into other sectoral policies, such as agriculture, forestry, water management, transport, etc.

In the Republic of Macedonia, there is an increasing need to adopt an appropriate law that will address soil from multiple aspects as an environmental medium.

Soil protection in the Republic of Macedonia is regulated by several laws:

• Law on Environment

• Law on Nature Protection

• Law on Agricultural Land (Official Gazette No. 135/07)

• Law on Forests (Official Gazette of R.M. Nos. 47/97, 2/00, 89/04, 54/07, 103/08)

• Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Forests (Official Gazette No. 54/07 of 03.05.2007)

• Law on Amendments to the Law on Forests (Official Gazette No. 07/2000 of 01.02.2000)

• Law on Spatial and Urban Planning (Official Gazette 52/05)

Documents describing the processes and measures for maintaining healthy soil, including methods for erosion prevention and protection of biological diversity.

Strategies and technologies for managing soil resources, including erosion, pollution, and soil protection for sustainable agriculture and environmental protection

Standardized forms or templates used for collecting and documenting information on the condition, chemical composition, and other characteristics of the soil, enabling precise analysis and management of agricultural and environmental practices.

Centralized databases containing information on the condition and quality of the soil, as well as on various activities and excessive uses.

Approvals or licenses issued by the competent authorities regulating activities related to the use of soil for various purposes, including agriculture, construction activities, and industry, in order to ensure soil protection.

Soil erosion represents a process of soil degradation and its displacement to lower parts of the watershed. According to the cause, erosion is divided into:

• Water erosion – caused by rain, runoff water, glaciers, and groundwater.

• Wind (aeolian) erosion – caused by wind.

• Abrasive erosion – caused by the combined action of wind and water.

In our country, water erosion is dominant, particularly erosion caused by rain and runoff water. Wind erosion occurs in high mountain peaks, but the damage from it is negligibly small compared to water erosion. The same applies to abrasive erosion, which is mainly caused by lake waves in our country.

Macedonia is one of the territories most threatened by erosion in the Balkans. Several reasons account for this:

• Long-term destructive human influence (destruction of natural vegetation, absence of measures for agricultural soil conservation, improper tillage that worsens the physical properties of the soil).

• Relief where mountains and valleys alternate, with the occurrence of steep and long slopes.

• Erodibility of certain sediments, rocks, and soils.

• Climatic conditions, such as the torrential nature of precipitation, and the arid climate, which limits natural vegetation growth.

Soil contamination from solid waste from mines, metallurgical plants, and other industrial facilities
One of the methods of exploiting coal, copper, and nickel ore is through open-pit mining. The greatest damage occurs during coal extraction for energy production, as it is found in our basins beneath fertile soils and deep layers of loose sediments. Solid waste from mines extracting Fe, Zn, Pb, Cr, Ni, Cu, etc., contains heavy metals and is processed by flotation.

Metallurgical waste in the Republic of Macedonia is generated in smelters during the production of iron, steel and alloys, lead and zinc, ferronickel, ferrochrome, ferrosilicon, and silicon metal. This waste covers certain areas of productive land with its mass, reducing the land fund. The high content of heavy metals is a result of the technology used, which does not fully utilize the ore.

Solid industrial waste has a similar impact on water and soil as metallurgical waste. While it covers smaller productive land areas, it causes strong contamination. It pollutes not only with heavy metals but also with other substances, such as organic compounds.

Covering the soil with solid municipal waste
Municipal waste has a highly heterogeneous composition and is a consequence of human activity. It is disposed of in designated landfills, as well as in so-called illegal dumps in rural areas and across the country.

Soil contamination in agriculture and forestry
Regarding the use of fertilizers in agriculture, it should be noted that for fertilizers to cause soil degradation, they must be used in excessively large amounts, and importantly, their soluble components must increase the concentration of the soil solution. Nitrates are the main contaminants among mineral fertilizers.

Pesticides are mineral, organo-mineral, and organic chemical compounds used in agriculture to destroy harmful organisms (weeds, insects, fungi, bacteria, etc.). The main drawbacks of pesticides are the prolonged persistence of some in the components of the biosphere, their ability to kill or damage beneficial organisms, and their migration outside the agroecosystem. Particularly dangerous are those that do not degrade and accumulate in the soil.

In Macedonia, 106 reclamation systems and about 20 larger reservoirs have been built. The irrigation network covers 140,000 ha, with an optimal irrigation capacity of 126,000 ha, but in reality, various areas of about 80,000 ha are irrigated. Most of the areas irrigated with water from artificial reservoirs are located in the upper reaches of rivers above the sources of pollution, except for the Tikveš and Kalimanci reservoirs. The most polluted waters (especially with heavy metals) are those used in mines (Zletovo, Sasa, Toranica) in flotation processes. Soils irrigated with river waters enriched with these effluents are contaminated with heavy metals, particularly lead and zinc.

Soil contamination through other environmental components
There is indirect soil contamination, meaning that air and water are first polluted, and soils become contaminated indirectly through these components. Pollutants emitted into the air reach the soil through rainfall and deposition. Pollutants from water reach soils through floods, irrigation, or capillary rise.

Urban pollution is diffuse, involving numerous sources: district heating plants, individual stoves, boilers, traffic, metallurgical, and industrial facilities. Suspended particles from the air are deposited onto the surface of soils and plants in the city through deposition and precipitation.

The productive land fund in our country is also reduced through changes in land use, for example for water reservoirs, the construction of settlements and industrial facilities, and various infrastructure projects. Soil sealing can also lead to habitat fragmentation and the interruption of migration corridors for wild animal species.

In the Republic of Macedonia, the CORINE Land Cover project began in late 1998, with verification of the final product carried out in February 2000. Due to the characteristics of the land cover on the territory of Macedonia, out of 44 possible classifications, 31 were identified. Additionally, for the same reasons, the minimum spatial unit processed in the project was reduced from 25 hectares to 20 hectares.

The CORINE Land Cover database contains valuable information which, in correlation with other data, can serve as a tool for addressing:

• Protection of high-quality arable land from the effects of urban development, especially around cities;

• Uneven regional development;

• Soil erosion problems in certain areas;

• Nature protection issues.

To obtain a clearer overview, the percentage representation for each classification in Macedonia was calculated and graphically presented. The CORINE Land Cover database was created only once, meaning there is information only about the land cover status in Macedonia, obtained from processed satellite images. As a result, these data cannot be used to assess changes in land cover over time.

Artificial surfaces in Macedonia occupy 1.45% of the country’s total area. Among all classes, the most common is discontinuous urban fabric, followed by industrial or commercial units, and mineral extraction sites.

Agricultural areas cover 36.58% of the total area of Macedonia. The largest share is non-irrigated arable land, followed by complex cultivation patterns, and pastures.

Forests and semi-natural areas occupy 59.65% of Macedonia’s total area. The most common class in this category is broad-leaved forest, followed by transitional woodland-shrub areas, and natural grasslands.

Inland wetlands cover 0.07% of Macedonia’s area, while water bodies cover 2.19%.

Overall, the population in Macedonia is increasing in the western and southwestern parts of the country, while decreasing in the eastern parts, as a result of natural population growth and migration. 87% of the population is concentrated in major cities. The capital, Skopje, is home to about one-quarter of the country’s population. Migration is also directed towards other large cities such as Kumanovo, Tetovo, Gostivar, Ohrid, Strumica, and Veles. As a result, most cities face problems with water supply, solid waste management, and air pollution from the transport sector and industrial facilities.

It is estimated that 95% of the territory of Macedonia was once covered with forests, and only a small part with natural grass vegetation, before the anthropogenic destruction and degradation of natural vegetation began, leading to the conversion of natural soils into agricultural land. Only slightly more than one-third of the natural forests have been preserved. Half of the destroyed forests have been converted into pastures, and the other half into arable land, while large areas of barren land have also been created (337,000 ha). An important component of this type of soil degradation is the reduction of plant residues, humus, and biogenic elements, leading to decreased natural soil fertility.

The content of humus and biogenic elements decreases much more slowly in soils that were formerly under grass vegetation compared to soils that were under forest communities. The reduction of humus through the destruction of meadow and marsh vegetation in Pelagonia, one of the largest plains in Macedonia used for cultivating various agricultural crops, is as follows: humus content in meadow soil before destruction – 3.98%, after destruction – 3.43%; in marsh soils – from 6.32% to 5.29%. This means that over 20 years, around 15% of the total amount of humus has been lost. In Pelagonia, 0.75% of the total humus content is lost annually, meaning biological degradation is low, i.e., less than 1%. In Macedonia, the average humus content in certain soil types is as follows: rendzinas in mountainous areas – 11.3%, vertisols – 4.17–4.68%, brown forest soils – 4.6%, alluvial soils – 2.9–3.9%.

The term “saline soils” is generally used as a common designation for solonchaks (soils characterized by additional moisture from groundwater, and more rarely from surface saline and alkaline waters, containing at least 1% salts in chloride-sulfate salinization or 0.7% salts in soda salinization, and with adsorbed Na ions above 5% at depths up to 125 cm in at least one part of the profile) and solonetz soils (where the intensity of salinization and alkalization is lower than in solonchaks), although the term is not entirely accurate. In fact, these are sodium soils, since sodium is the main element involved in their genesis, either in the form of salts or as adsorbed ions. In our country, saline soils are referred to by various local names such as: solena zemja, solenica, slatina, belokalica, ќelak, tvrđak, etc.

The area of saline soils in our country is small, amounting to only 0.42% of the total land area. These soils have mainly formed in flat terrains, which make up only 7.9% of our territory. Moreover, in much of our country, the climate is not arid, there are no salt-bearing sediments, and there are no saline groundwater sources. An exception is the Pelagonia region, due to specific hydrographic conditions. Most saline soils are found in central and eastern Macedonia, in a continental-sub-Mediterranean zone characterized by pronounced aridity, high evaporation, the presence of Paleogene sediments (including saline ones), and shallow mineralized groundwater. Notably, 90% of all saline soil surfaces occur in just four basins (Strumica, Skopje, Ovche Pole, and Pelagonia). In Macedonia, there are about 11,000 ha under solonchaks and solonetz soils, of which 3,200 ha are solonchaks, meaning solonetz soils dominate. These soils have a natural origin, but human activity plays a significant direct and indirect role in their formation.

Salinization occurs under certain conditions: in negative relief forms, under the influence of capillary rise and evaporation of shallow saline groundwater, in areas with arid and semi-arid continental-sub-Mediterranean climates with high evapotranspiration. The main sources of salts are saline Paleogene sediments and chemical weathering.

Human impact on the genesis and properties of these soils can be both indirect and direct. Indirectly, humans can alter pedogenetic factors (hydrographic conditions, vegetation), and thus the soils themselves. Anthropogenic salinization occurs when irrigation is done with saline water, or when the level of mineralized groundwater rises due to excessive use of good-quality river water for irrigation under poorly drained conditions.

Soil can also be contaminated by polluted surface and groundwater if they come into contact with the soil in any way.

Through implemented drainage measures, i.e., by protecting an area of nearly 70,000 ha from floods, contaminated river waters cannot come into contact with the soil through flooding. An exception to this are several hotspots – soils along rivers that carry polluted wastewater from mines in eastern Macedonia. The soils along the Zletovska River, Kamenichka River, and Toranichka River are not protected from flooding