International Collaboration in the Compilation of Monographs on the Geography of Individual Socialist Countries

The paper describes an attempt to determine the causes of the development of the present gully network in the steppe and forest-steppe of the European part of the USSR. The authors develop a technique that involves comparing the number of gullies derived from a map of gully density with the number of gullies derived from data on the expansion of the cropland area within the boundaries of the prerevolutionary guberniyas (major civil divisions). The authors conclude from the close correspondence of the two sets of figures that the great majority of gullies could have been formed as a result of the plowing up of the land over the 150 to 300 years of agricultural land use in the study region and can therefore be assumed to have arisen as a result of human activities.