DEVELOPING THE PREREQUISITES FOR SUSTAINABLE LAND-USE IN ALBANIA

When Albania emerged from its seclusion in 1991, the scientific commun ity had its first opportunity to interact with its international count erparts. Soil resource assessment was made with systems developed in t he early 1950s, laboratory facilities to provide supporting data were poor, and it was recognized that a new assessment was urgently needed. The country faces a major challenge in reforestation and sail conserv ation against a background of overgrazing by sheep and goats and clear ing of trees and scrubs for fuelwood. Even orchard and olive trees wer e used as fuelwood during the winters of 1990 and 1991. Since then, gu lly and rill erosion has accelerated on many of the sloping lands. In addition to reforestation and conservation measures to reduce the pres sures on the sloping land, it is necessary to enhance productivity on the fertile valley bottom soils where most of the agriculture is confi ned. In the recent past, grain yields have declined due to reduced fer tilizer use (low purchasing capacity), and poor management practices. More recently productivity has slowly improved, but land degradation, particularly erosion, has visibly increased. USDA Natural Resources Co nservation Service in collaboration with the Land Resources Institute of Albania, initiated work an a new national soil map through collatio n of existing information and field studies. The land unit for land us e planning, evaluation, and general management decisions, is the Major Land Resource Area (MLRA). Each MLRA encompasses geographically assoc iated soils, the majority of which have broadly similar patterns of cl imate, water resources, and land uses. The MLRAs presented here are ba sed on the soil map of Albania at 1 :200 000 scale. The MLRA informati on provides an overview of the landscape and natural resources. It can be used to assess land suitability for various crops, opportunities t o achieve self sufficiency in food production, selection of areas for both field crops and high value crops for export, and identification o f appropriate farming system technologies. Each MLRA will have a set o f degradation processes which can be flagged, therefore each of them b ecomes a unit for decision making with respect to investments in resea rch and mitigating technologies. The task is far from complete. Approp riate databases are needed to support the decisions that are being mad e at national level. To complement the MLRA and related database, deci sion support systems are needed for the important task of developing p olicy options.