Study of the water balance of sandy lands based on geoinformation mapping

Introduction. Sandy massifs of the Don River and its tributaries, with a total area of more than 1 million hectares, are local hydraulic reservoirs and desalinators of river waters. Atmospheric precipitation, passing through the salt-washed aeration zone, drains into groundwater, springs and rivers. The volume of this water mass depends on the amount of precipitation, the type of sand and the biomass growing in the studied territories.

Materials and methods. The purpose of the work is to determine the quantitative and qualitative indicators of the water supply of plant formations and river systems, based on the study of the water balance of different types of sands and the determination of their areas when deciphering satellite images of the territory. To accurately calculate the water balance of the subregion, it is necessary to identify the types of soil and vegetation conditions and the areas occupied by them. When using geoinformation mapping based on the decoding of satellite images by the method of selection of standards and pixel image analysis, the main types of sands and the area of living ground cover in the key area of the Hopero-Medveditsky sand massif were identified. During field studies, the vegetation cover was studied and the features of the water balance for each standard were determined, the amount of water discharged by a key site in the Kumylga river was determined.

Results and conclusion. On the basis of the selected benchmarks and further interpretation of the space image of the territory, a soil and vegetation map of the key area was drawn up and the areas of sandy land types were determined. Based on water-balance studies at the key site, the annual discharge of precipitation to groundwater is 5348 thousand m3. Water intakes in the operating springs and on the left bank of the Kumylga river allowed to confirm the correctness of our calculations.

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