METHODOLOGY OF ECODIAGNOSTICS ON THE EXAMPLE OF RURAL AREAS

One of the directions of sustainable agrarian development in Ukraine is ensuring the implementation of the multifunctional role of agriculture, development of human resources, protection of the environment, genetic resources and biodiversity, etc. At present, Ukraine has no system for the preservation of the environment and diagnostics of its condition, in particular in rural areas, where excessive plowing and landfills become a threat to the local population. The agrosphere is mainly formed and functioning in rural territories, uses its resources (spatial, natural, human, material) remaining a forming core of rural development and largely determining the overall progress and sustainability of this development. According to the data of the State Statistics Committee [1], the per cent of rural population in the structure of the Ukrainian population in 2017 is 30.8%.

The deterioration of the environment, the degradation of natural systems, as well as new negative trends in economic development, along with the slow implementation of tools for responding to emerging problems created a threat to the ecosystem as a whole.

The problem of eco-diagnostics and the adequacy of the data obtained has become worldwide and is growing every year along with the growth of human influence on natural landscapes.

The purpose of the paper is to study the methods of eco-diagnostics of rural areas to determine the number and area of areas contaminated by waste and not suitable for agricultural use.

The agrosphere is a number of territories where, as a result of the anthropogenic factors, predominantly humanized forms of living matterintended for the effective transformation of solar energy into the products necessary for human existence, function [2].

The waste that accumulates is the result of human influence. This removes land from agricultural use. M. Gandy writes that the affluence of western society has given rise to unprecedented quantities of waste, presenting one of the most intractable environmental problems for contemporary society. Contrary to the hopes of many environmentalists and policy makers, municipal waste management is moving steadily towards the profitable option of incineration with energy recovery, rather than the recycling of materials or waste reduction at source [3].

To study the human impact on the ecosystem, new methods and their use in the system are needed. The paper by S. García-Ayllón discusses the environmental criteria for ecological planning of territories using GIS [4].

An analysis of the ecological and economic consequences of household waste storage and evaluation of basic fuel properties of waste from renovation and construction selected from municipal wastes was investigated by M. Czop, M. Kajda-Szcześniak [5], A. Generowicz, Z. Kowalski, M.Banach, A. Makara [6] and others.

The overused landscapes lead to a variety of agroecosystem transformations and create a threat to the existence of the population, which, according to representatives of the Club of Rome, may become a point of no return and lead to disastrous consequences [7].

At the beginning of 2018, the crop area of Ukraine, according to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine [8], amounted to 27.2 million hectares, whereas in 2017 the crop area under cultivation amounted to 26.9 million hectares, which is 152 thousand hectares more than in 2016. In 2017, the sunflower growing area exhausting the soil was 5.6 million hectares, and winter rape growing area was 858 thousand hectares. In 2017, the area of agricultural land was 42.7 million hectares or 70 percent of the total area of the country, and the area of arable land was 32.5 million hectares or 78.4 percent of all agricultural land.

The plowed surface, which in 2017 was more than 54% of the total land fund of Ukraine, including one the slopes, led to a disturbance of the ecologically balanced ratio of agricultural lands, reservoirs and forest plantations, which negatively affected the agro-landscapes and caused a significant technogenic load on the environment and increase of soil erosion.

Along with the over-growing of agro-landscapes, there is a constant accumulation of waste and the creation of waste landfills, the area of which in 2017, according to data [9], amounted to about 7% of Ukraine’s total area. Over time, the soils can be restored with a balanced environmental management, but degraded soils lose this property, thereby reducing the area of productive land in Ukraine. The creation of landfills, in addition to removing theoretically productive soils from the circulation, poses a threat to the cultivation of agricultural products on a large area in the vicinity of landfills. According to [10, 11], the multiplier effect of the landfill is 84, depending on the amount of accumulated waste, that is, if you use the multiplier of the standard landfill area, then this figure must be increased by 84 and the rate of growth of unsuitable areas is increased to 160 square kilometers per year.

A balanced land structure contributes to increasing the stability and productivity of agro-landscapes and the sustainability of ecosystems in general. The fundamentals of environmental optimization of agrarian nature were first formulated by V. Dokuchaev as the development of norms relative to the areas of arable land, meadows, forest and water [6, 10–15].

The decomposition of waste has the greatest impact on soil, underground water resources, and atmosphere. Since landfills have an impact on the quality of water in reservoirs, the effect of their operation can be observed in the quality of soils and agricultural products through the ingress of filtrate. At the same time, landfills promote the spread of parasites and diseases; separate fractions of garbage during decomposition are converted into radioactive compounds or poisonous substances; they cause pollution of atmospheric air and other negative consequences.

Sanitary, hygienic and toxicological standards are used for the general assessment of the state of the environment and the determination of the influence of individual sources in its pollution, but to predict the impact of human factors on both the ecosystem and the health of people we should take into account indicators that characterize the response of individual organisms and ecosystems as a whole to the anthropogenic impact. The mortality of the rural population exceeds the mortality of the urban population. In 2012, the average mortality rate in cities was 13.1 cases per 1,000 people (9.5 in Rivne region to 15.8 in Donetsk region), while in villages the mortality rate was 17.7 per 1,000 – 12.1 in Transcarpathia region to over 27.2 in Chernihiv region [1].

At present, the morbidity in Ukraine increases, in particular, there is an increase in the appearance of malignant neoplasms, which correlates with the dynamics of the waste formation with a coefficient of 0.68 (Fig. 1).

Figure 1.

The 2014 data do not include the data from the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol and the temporarily occupied territories in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, therefore we can observe a deviation from the general line of the trend.

Based on the data [9], we will calculate social losses per month in Ukraine due to an increase in the incidence of the population living in the area of the impact of landfills, shown as amoney value.

(1) S . s h = N * p * T Q * W

S.Sh = 41,3 mln.UAH,

where Q – the number of working days per month (in our study it is 20), W – the minimum wage (in 2017 years it is 3,200 UAH in Ukraine), T is the number of days of disability due to illness per year, N is the expected number of diseases, p is the increase in the likelihood of illness due to living in the area of landfill impact.

In 2018, as a result of breach of the dike in the village of Tarasivka, Kyiv region, the lake water with filtrate which is near the landfill that had been closed in 2014, fell into the tributary of the River Siverka, which caused pollution of tens of kilometers of the territory and increased the social costs by 350 thousand UAH.

In addition to the official landfills, there is a problem of illegal landfills that are not accounted for and operate without compliance with sanitary-epidemiological standards and already closed landfills.

The degree of balance of the territorial structure is estimated by the coefficients of ecological stability of the territory (C_es ) and anthropogenic load on it (C_al ). The generally recognized baseline data on the coefficient of stability of different types of lands and the assessment of the degree of anthropogenic load to calculate the above coefficients are given in Table 1.

The coefficient of ecological stability of the territory is determined by the formula: (2) K e c = Σ K i P i Σ P i K r where:

K _i – coefficient of ecological stability of the i-type land,

If the K _es value is up to 0.33, the area is environmentally unstable; if it’s over 0.34–0.50 – unstably stable, vulnerable; of it’s 0.51–0.66 – variablely stable; over 0.66 – ecologically stable.

According to [17], we calculate the coefficient of additional load on the agro ecosystem through the operation of waste landfills.

(3) K p o l = k b c Σ S i S i p o l Σ S i

Where S _i – area of the studied region, S _pol – area of landfills in the area.

It was found that on average in each region of Ukraine, where the area of landfills exceeds 500 hectares, the ecological stability coefficient decreases by 0.1. Regions with ecologically imbalanced territorial structure are Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhia, Kirovohrad, Odessa, Kyiv and Luhansk regions.

At present, the effective tool for monitoring agroecosystems is the method of remote observation [5, 18, 19]. There are many programs for working with satellite data. This and GoogleMaps, Yandex, ArcGis, QGis, Panorama and others. Modern satellites have a resolution of about 10 m, which makes it possible to explore such parameters as the structure of the given area, height, area, distance and analyze changes in the time interval. Fig. 2 shows TPP number 6, where household rubbish is disposed of, although according to the documentation it is a construction waste landfill located in a quarry not far from the village of Pyrohiv in Holosiivskyi district. Private households located in the vicinity of the impact of this landfill are high-risk areas, and agricultural products grown in these areas are poisonous and can lead to a decrease in the population’s immunity and increased morbidity. In particular, construction at a distance of less than 1 km from the landfills leads to an increase in cases of infectious and parasitic diseases (correlation coefficient – 0.75) and malignant neoplasms (correlation coefficient – 0.68) according to the State Committee of Statistics [1].

Figure 2.

Figure 3 shows a household waste landfill near the agricultural land. The landfill has the greatest impact on underground and surface water, therefore the quality of agricultural products grown in this area is deteriorating, and it’s unlikely that those who buy these products are aware of this. According to the researches, most landfills are ecologically dangerous and do not meet sanitary and epidemiological standards, therefore the price of land should also be adjusted considering the environmental indicators.

Figure 3.

The main problem of introducing modern disposal methods is sorting of garbage in large cities and the introduction of recycling.

The best approach for Ukraine requires a balance between the three components of the landscape: natural complexes, transitional areas and agricultural lands, in such proportion that the overall level of anthropogenic load does not exceed the natural ecosystem stability potential.

In the determination of land prices, it is suggested to consider the coefficient of quality of this land.

To calculate the price of land, a formula is proposed considering the coefficient of quality of this land plot, which shows how much you need to invest in the restoration of this area to its initial natural state: (4) P − K B C ≥ r ,

Where P is an annual profit from the use of land (from the point of view of the entrepreneur, the activity in the agricultural sector competes with its income in other areas of economic activity); C is the price of land; r is the deposit rate (in absolute units), C _r is the coefficient of restoration of this land [22].

C _r is calculated in cash equivalent and is a reflection of all costs associated with the restoration of this land to the natural (zero state). In this case, the land near waste landfills is overrated, and with the consideration of the cost of their restoration, the profitability of agricultural production in these territories is significantly reduced.

That is, with the increase of the quality of land and the level of development of productive forces, the profit from the use of agricultural land will increase that will promote sustainable land use investment throughout the life cycle of agricultural production enterprises [20]. Therefore, the operation of landfills near agricultural land is an additional anthropogenic load, which negatively affects the restoration of the quality of resources and sustainability of the ecosystem [21–25].

1.

The rural area of Ukraine is an area of increased risk and anthropogenic load, which causes a change in agro-landscapes and can lead to a global ecological crisis.