STATE OF SOIL

    The Hungarian soils are very varied, and there are some specific soil properties or periglacial soil formations. This is one of the reasons of the richness of the Hungarian landscape, flora and fauna, the high number of endemic species and good quality of Hungarian agricultural products.

The physical soil types in Hungary

    Soil degradation is partly a natural process but is also affected by human activities. As a result of human activity degradation processes might increase, accelerate, integrate or modify. In a given area there are many degradation processes going on at the same time.

    The factors of soil degradation:

• soil acidification: the decrease of pH-value
  
• erosion: soil transport caused by water or wind
  
• extremely light soil: the high amount of rough fraction
  
• salinalisation: increase of water dissolvable salts (particularly sodium)
  
• marsh formation: covered by water in a long period
  
• desertification: long-term aridity
  
• decrease of biological activity: soil infertility
  
• toxicity: harmful accumulation of the toxic elements

Lands with deteriorated condition in Hungary (million ha)
Source: Soil protection in Hungary, Ministry for Agriculture and Rural Development
 

    This leads on to the elaboration, in 1991, of the Information and Monitoring system of Soil Conservation (TIM) whose role was to continuously detect the state and contamination of soils. The actual monitoring began in 1992 and includes three monitoring types: the national basic monitoring network (comprising 1200 points), the monitoring system for special areas, and the measuring sites in the forests.

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