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The paper deals with the environmental issues of agriculture. Examples are given that pose a threat to the vital activity of living organisms from various types of agricultural and human activities. The subject of the study is the analysis of environmental issues arising from the intensification of the development of agricultural industry. Intensive agricultural activity leads to pollution of surface rivers, lakes, seas and groundwater, soil degradation and aquatic ecosystems; violation of the water regime in large areas during drainage and irrigation; desertification due to wind erosion; destruction of natural habitats of living organisms of flora and fauna. An urgent problem of agriculture is a decrease in the content of vitamins and microelements in crop production and the accumulation of harmful substances in them. The reasons for these negative processes are soil degradation, intensification of agricultural production.

This work is devoted to the rural areas’ integrated development issues. The advantages of a systematic approach for the sustainable development paradigm main policies’ goals implementation and the possibility of using geoinformation technologies as a tool for multidimensional analysis of rural areas are considered. A two-stage methodology for monitoring the rural settlements development, which makes it possible to assess the territory at the federal and local levels by a set of indicators reflecting the main aspects of socio-economic processes, is proposed. Special attention is paid to assessing the quality of the environment by three groups of factors that take into account environmental comfort, movement comfort and other indicators characterizing the comfort of living from the point of view of the territorial residents’ individual needs.

The multifunctionality of the city makes it possible to consider it from the point of view of the urbanized landscape, giving due attention to the concept of its sustainable development. The development is based on the landscape-ecological approach, which makes it possible to analyze the natural, social, economic and urban planning subsystems of the city’s land-property complex. This approach made it possible to assess natural and anthropogenic processes, to establish the degree of degradation of the urban landscape and, based on the method of analyzing hierarchies, the results of sociocultural surveys, to develop a set of measures for the rational organization of the use and protection of urban lands [1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9-11].

In the Southern Federal District, where the Volgograd region occupies a significant territory, cultivation of vegetable crops is impossible without irrigation. There was a large number of wide-spread sprinklers in the USSR. Each unit of this system watered at least 60 to70 hectares, required a lot of water pressure that resulted in high operating costs. Therefore, currently, such local irrigation methods as drip and subsoil irrigation have a broad development perspective. Both irrigation methods favorably differ from sprinkling by a significant increase in yield of vegetable crops, irrigation water saving, ease of operation and rapid investment return. In this regard, the main goal of our research, conducted at Volgograd State Agricultural University, is development of techniques and technologies for drip and subsoil irrigation that allow receiving projected vegetable yields while maintaining soil fertility and environmental safety. The research have shown that it is possible to obtain planned yields of 60, 70 and 80 t/ha of zucchini and table beet using drip irrigation in steppe zone of southern Russia on light chestnut soils. Therefore, it is necessary to observe irrigation regimes with maintaining pre-irrigation moisture (PIM) 75-85-75 and 85% of field moisture capacity (FMC) simultaneously with application of calculated doses of mineral fertilizers. Moreover, it is important to apply increased doses of mineral fertilizers with decrease in intensity of irrigation regime due to reduction in soil moisture content to 75% of FMC. The planned radish yield of 80 tons per hectare with subsoil irrigation can be obtained in variants with differentiated soil moisture 75-85-75% of FMC and 1.4 m distance n t between humidifiers, and also maintaining constant soil moisture at 85% of FMC at plots with 1.2 and 1.4 m distances.

AbstractIn recent decades, in our country insufficient attention has been paid to the study of soil mechanics. Currently, there is a need to study the mechanical processes in the soil when it interacts with the working bodies of tillage machines and operating systems of mobile agricultural equipment. With existing technologies for cultivating crops, various machines pass through the field from 10 to 15 times. The tools used have a centuries-old history of development and improvement, both of individual types of working parts, and of technological tillage complexes as a whole. At the same time, the scientific basis for tillage has not yet been fully developed. The article explores soil mechanics and intensification of agriculture; saturating it with heavy machines, and increasing the energy saturation of tractors put forward new tasks that cannot be solved without the development of theoretical and applied research in the field of soil mechanics. Depending on the formulation of the tasks of the interaction of tillage organs and movers with soil, degenerate models can be used that contain only those rheological properties of the soil that define the main goal of the technological problem.

Recently published green infrastructure, nature-based solutions, and ecosystem disservices (ED) literature have focused primarily on the supply of urban regulating and cultural ecosystem services (ES). Other literature on urban and peri-urban agriculture has mostly studied the role of localized, intensive agricultural practices in providing food to inhabitants. The aim of this review is to raise awareness and stress the knowledge gap on the importance of urban provisioning ES, particularly when implementing an edible green infrastructure (EGI) approach as it can offer improved resilience and quality of life in cities. We compiled and systematically analyzed studies on urban ES and ED related to a number of EGI typologies. Our systematic review of the relevant literature via an EGI framework, identified more than 80 peer-reviewed publications that focused on ES and food production in urban areas. An EGI approach can contribute socially, economically, and environmentally to urban sustainability and food security. However, such benefits must be weighed against ED trade-offs, including: potential health risks caused by human exposure to heavy metals and organic chemical contaminants often present in urban surroundings. We conclude with recommendations and guidelines for incorporating EGI into urban planning and design, and discuss novel areas for future research.

AbstractThe study is devoted to the development of digital technologies in the forest industry, which potential in Russia is practically not measured and belongs to the state ownership at all. The work revealed that forests are exposed to fires, illegal logging, flooding, the spread of diseases, etc. every year, which requires state and regional structures to constantly monitor and control the state of the forest fund. The study conducted an analysis of indicators related to the state of the forest fund, which revealed that in recent years, the volumes of forests and wood have not changed, but there is an increasing tendency to destroy them. Based on the results of the analysis, it was suggested that in order to effectively account for, analyze, monitor and control the forest in the forest industry, it is necessary to apply digital technologies that will allow for the effective implementation of annual forestry supervision. At the end of the study, the stages of digital forest taxation related to the control of the number of tree stands were presented.

Relevance. Selection of columnar apple cultivars and development of adapted elements of their cultivation technology are one of the promising areas of the research work of the Russian Research Institute of Fruit Crop Breeding. The result of 36 years of the target selection work was the creation of 5 columnar apple cultivars accepted in the State Register of breeding achievements: ‘Priokskoye’, ‘Poezia’, ‘Vostorg’, ‘Girlianda’ and ‘Orlovskaya Yesenia’. All cultivars are characterized by high precocity, productivity and immunity to scab. The special habit of the columnar shape of the apple tree determines a special type of planting that is characteristic only for it, providing for super-dense placement of trees.Results. Our research experimentally demonstrates the possibility of reducing the total number of plants per hectare while maintaining a high density of fruit wood in the orchard. These technologies will significantly reduce the amount of necessary planting material, therefore, reduce the initial cost of laying a columnar apple orchard. Thus, when growing columnar cultivars in the crown of a 3–4-98 semi- dwarf rootstock with a tree planting density of 3333 trees per hectare, the number of columnar branches corresponds to the plantation with a density of 20,000 columnar trees per 1 ha. The study of this technology showed that the cultivars entered fruiting in the third year after grafting of 2-year-old skeletal trees; the yield of the studied columnar cultivars for the first 10 years of fruiting averaged 81.6 t/ ha. Annual fruiting was observed throughout the entire observation period. Another promising option is to grow columns in the form of crowned plants on a dwarf rootstock 62–396. The crown on average consists of 5 branches, while the total number of columnar branches reaches 12 500 PCs/ha. The proportion of trees that entered fruiting in the third year after grafting depended on the depth of seedling planting. For normal planting, it was 28%, which is twice the same value for deep planting (15 cm below the root neck).