Remote monitoring of the main types of soil in Northern Kazakhstan

The results of researches presented in article were obtained within implementation of the scientific and technical program for program-targeted financing of applied scientific research on space activities for 2018-2020 by the Aerospace Committee of the Ministry of Defense and Aerospace Industry of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Considering the high production significance of soil resources for Kazakhstan as the main means of production, soil fertility assessment, methods of rational use of land resources is estimated as a priority scientific direction. The article shows the application of the remote sensing (RS) data and GIS-technologies for the assessment of the soil fertility of the main soils types in Northern Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the ninth biggest country in the world, the production resource of arable lands takes more than 18.3 million hectares. Operational assessment of such data is possible only with use of RS methods. Kazakhstan, having own space system of ERS, has the powerful tool for effective management of land resources, operative and reliable monitoring of agricultural production and economic activity. It is established that the pre-sowing content of basic nutrients on the main soil types have the considerable impact on development of cultural plants biomass which is registered by satellites through vegetation indices. On the basis of empirical dependencies using the universal equation by reporting year the particular dependence of significance of some soil nutrients with derivates of vegetation indices according to the RS data is revealed. Results of space monitoring and also the confirmed ground-truth observations noted high anthropogenic influence on the leading soil-forming processes, high coefficient of familiarity of agricultural grounds and the developing processes of soil cover degradation in Northern Kazakhstan.