RS is organized into 62 municipalities and comprise 2,745 settlements. The average population density is 47 people per km2(Census, 2017). The entire territory is part of three morphologic clusters: Pannonian region, mountain-valley region and Adriatic region (Figure 1A). These regions contain diverse climatic regimes which are characterized by a Mediterranean climate in the southwest, continental-mountain in the central and north region, and moderate continental climate in the remaining area (Trbić et al., 2017). According to the World Reference Base classification (WRB, 2014), the most widespread soils in RS are Mollic Leptosol, Haplic Cambisol and Leptic Cambisol. RS is a predominantly mountainous region, mainly covered by forest (52%) and agricultural (40%) land, with some urban areas (8%) and few water bodies (Corine LC, 2018). Large proportion of forest land are degraded from deforestation on steeper hillsides (Kapović et al., 2013), resulting in soil erosion and consequent land degradation (Kostadinov et al., 2019). Most of the arable land in RS is not used (45.5%) (Statistical journal, 2017), and has been abandoned since the late 1990s (Tošić et al., 2019). Large areas of abandoned land are now overgrown with vegetation (UNEP, 2017) and have practically lost the status of agricultural land. This was linked with population decrease in RS, from 190.804 people in 1985 to 53.781 households in 2012 (Agency, 2017). This is due to migration of people from these lands, which resulted in significant declines in agricultural production and a 7% increase of abandoned land since 1985. In the northern region of RS, agricultural production decreased due to migration during both the conflict and post conflict period, but is still dominant land use. Agriculture areas managed under intensive agricultural practicies (i.e. cropland cultivation, monoculture of main crops) are impacted by erosional processes and are the most serious land degradation driver mention on literature (Tošić et al., 2011; Tošić et al., 2013).
Data on soil erosion intensity and trends are given by the reconstructed Soil Erosion Map of the RS, developed during the period from 1979–1985 (Lazarević, 1986) and then compared with the soil erosion map developed only for the RS territory after the war (Tošić et al., 2012).
RESULTS