Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT
Bărăgan Plain, located in south-eastern part of Romania, is bounded in the south and east by the Danube meadow, in the North, by the Siret river lower meadow, in the west, is bounded, on the north to the south, by the Buzău river meadow, Sărata valley, Obârşia Mostiştei, Pasărea valley, Dâmboviţa river, and finally the Argeş river meadow, this limit (particularly those starting from the south of Călmăţui river) overlaps the interference between the forest-steppe and the restricted forest formations. From a climate perspective, Bărăgan Plain is characterized by a temperate climate due to its geographical location, with a high degree of continentalism determined by its position in the interference of air masses of continental, arctic and oceanic origin, plus the relative uniformity of the active area. Against the background of global climate change, in the last century, in our country it is found through the meteorological records, a progressive aridity trend of the climate, manifested particularly in areas in southern and south-eastern Romania. This is highlighted for the Bărăgan Plain, through the analysis of data collected for a period of 50 years, that showing a tendency to increase the multiannual values of average temperature, maximum and minimum, decreasing amounts of atmospheric precipitations, accompanied by the extending of the sunshine duration, lowering the average multiannual speed intensity of the winds, as well as, intensification of climatic anomalies, represented by periods of prolonged drought and extreme events such as storms or tornadoes.
Keywords: Bărăgan Plain, climatic changes, aridity, drought
INTRODUCTION
Aridity and desertification can often seem 'related' to each other when, in fact, they are a distinct process, respectively phenomenon [7]. While desertification takes the form of a complex phenomenon, being the direct ecological expression of the concentration of various processes that lead to its emergence, aridity is seen by scientists as a process prior to its installation, so that, since 1977 FAO-UNESCO [5] has considered it a climatic process, defined by the expression of the Aridity Index (R) with values between 0.5-0.65, which creates a favourable background for the desertification occurrence. In 1988, Romanian scientist I. Munteanu [7] explains the term aridity as appropriate to the rainfall reducing and the air temperature increasing trend, corroborated with the vulnerability of lands with soils moderately...