Resilience of Red Ferralitic soils in the karst regions of Mayabeque Province, Cuba

Abstract

There is an ongoing global debate on soil degradation, its magnitude and agro-environmental impact, where long-term experimentation provides quantitative criteria for its capacity for restauration with rational use and management. In this context, research in the last 30 years has confirmed that the resilience of Red Ferralitic soils in the karst regions of western Cuba is a multifactorial process, conditioned not only by the intrinsic properties of the soil surface and use conditions but also dependent on geological–geomorphological and use conditions. This study determined the capacity of Red Ferralitic soils for blocking karst-erosion to be a period of 50 years in the San Jose de Las Lajas polje. They would recover, but depending on the amount of limestone impurities, it would take from 100 to 600 years. In any case, there are very few similar studies, not only because of the time necessary to achieve reliable results but also because in the case of karst ecosystems, they are subjected to constant disturbances impeding resilience research.