Methods of Creating Various Forest Plantations on the Dried-up Bottom of the Aral Sea

The dried-up bottom of the Aral Sea is now a global problem, as millions of tons of salt, dust, and sand are being blown away by winds, covering plants in the region and damaging all living organisms in the area of the Aral Sea. Methods of forestry and the ameliorative reclamation of saline bottom sediments include the creation of sand-accumulating furrows and the installation of sand-accumulating mechanical protection made of reed and sand-retaining wood or plastic gratings. The method of cutting sand-accumulating furrows with a trench cutter with a paraplough is the most efficient: the survival rate of seedlings in the next year after planting reaches 85%, as opposed to 52% in furrows without the use of a paraplough and 12% on the control plot without sand-accumulating furrows. Therefore, it is necessary to accumulate sand and moisture and improve the chemical and particle-size composition of the substrate prior to planting seedlings on saline soils.