Karapınar erozyon koruma alanı topraklarının koruma sonrası toprak gelişiminin incelenmesi

The Karapinar area occupies a desert fringe position in die Great Konya Basin of Central Anatolia. Grazing has been a way of life for centuries and the population gathered wood from the shrubs for fuel. The village has served crusades and hoards moving east west over Anatolia. In the middle of this century, due to rapid increases in animal population, the scanty vegetation was denuded and the land further exposed to the vagaries of climate. By the fifties, wind erosion had noticeably increased and active dune formation could be observed. The General Directorate of Rural Services responded by establishing an Erosion Control Camp. A soil survey was conducted in the early sixties and other management studies were initiated. The initial successes were encouraging and in the seventies an area of 14,000 ha was fenced off and the land set-aside as a wind erosion rehabilitation area. Today, about 40 years later, the site is known as "Köy Hizmetleri Toprak Tali İstasyonu or Soil Conservation Sub-station of the General Directorate of Rural Services" and has become a teaching and demonstration center for managing land prone to wind erosion. It is also fondly referred to as a monument to visionary thinking and good land management science. The purpose of the present study is to observe the major changes in the quality of the land resource. The changes in the four decades are an example of the resilience of the ecosystem. The experiment is also an illustration of how processes of desertification can be thwarted through a managed ecosystem mat ensures a balanced mixture of agricultural land use of ecosystem integrity. Key Words: Karapınar, Dunes, Soil Conservation, Erosion, Genesis. II