The most spread are soils with vertic properties at the territory of Kamennaya Steppe (Voronezh region, Talovsky district) being confined to four landscape positions within 11 different soil combinations derived from clayey or two-layered heavy loam-clayey parent materials. These soils have developed: (A) on bottoms of deep and closed depressions covered by spotted soil combinations in flat watersheds; (B) on some depression bottoms in spotted combinations without solonetzic soils; (C) in different relief elements occupied by chernozemic hydromorphic solonetz complexes and (D) in concave (in long and cross directions) relief elements in the topolithomosaic composition confined to exposed re-deposition products of Dnieper moraine on the slope of Talovaya narrow. Occupying only 0.2% from the total area of agro-forest landscapes, the vertic soils can account for 0.7% to 15% within a separate soil combination and reveal a great diversity. The latter is associated with vertic properties developed together with features of gleying and quasi-gleying, accumulation of calcium carbonates and, on the contrary, clay illuviation against the background of calcium carbonate leaching, solonetz process, salinization, humus formation and the topsoil eluviations. Such a diversity may be adequately reflected both in the soil classification of Russia and in WRB.

The paper presents a great variety of anthropogenic effects on chernozems against the background of natural and climatic changes; their consequences are shown as well. Changes in regimes, processes and some properties of chernozems are estimated as genetically predetermined to be a current evolution stage of the soil formation. Different kinds of natural and anthropogenic effects, their complicated interactions that lead to the serious transformation of the structure and properties of chernozems are considered as a methodological platform for scientific research.

As the theory and mathematical methods have been so far introduced insufficiently into elaborating the soil classification nowadays, an attempt is made to demonstrate some available approaches. An aphoristic title of this paper is used not to dethrone an “aristocratic” pattern of this significant problem that has being constantly discussed in soil science but to show how the up-to-date means of informatics allow solving numerous tasks related to the elaboration, investigation and utilization of classification structures based upon a description of soil objects. The research in preparing any classification should be carried out in the way described in this paper in order to consider it as complicated and open for discussion, investigation and further development.

Under consideration are the calculation results obtained by means of the soil and agro-climatic index PAKI to estimate natural-anthropogenic positive and adverse effects on the soil fertility. The assessment of positive effects is exemplified by liming of soils in the southern taiga zone, whereas the assessment of adverse effects is considered with special reference to water erosion and soil washout in the forest-steppe and steppe zones. Such a methodological approach provides comparative spatially orientated information and allows assessing the soil quality rating scores for arable lands, thus showing (1) the efficiency of soil liming and (2) the degree of adverse effects exerted by water erosion on the soil fertility. The application of PAKI index meets demands of soil management and permits to forecast the transformation of soil resources, changes in the soil cover pattern, and soil productivity. It may serve as a background for land taxation.

The paper is aimed to consider the theory and methods of determining the coefficients of water conductivity and filtration. Soil columns and lysimeters were used for this purpose. It is shown that even a slightly expressed decrease in the moisture content can lead to decreasing the water conductivity in soil. In the range of high values of the moisture potential the coefficient of water conductivity is significantly higher for light-textured soils, on the contrary, within the range of middle and low values it seems higher for loamy soils. The maximum of water conductivity in any soil is close to filtration coefficients, but its minimum tends to zero. The coefficients of water conductivity and filtration become usually close under conditions of descending flow when the moisture is equal to the maximum water capacity or close to it.