The analysis of a soil-ecological base commenced on the existing mountain-forest cinnamon soils in the New Shamkirchay Reservoir Basin, which play a vital role in developing the agricultural economy in the Western region of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Thus, cleaning the area, increasing the fertility of mountain-brown soils, water-retaining capacity, and developing an action plan to ensure better productivity are among the most urgent processes to eliminate water shortages in areas with historical irrigation systems. The presented article discusses the research on the mountain-forest brown soils formed in the Shamkir region territory. This research area’s formation comprised an area of 2,498.43 ha. The current analysis based on the morphological and chemical descriptions with diagnostic indicators of six soil profiles (Sections 26, 27, 28, 33, 34, and 54) progressed during 2018–2021 in the targeted areas. The prime diagnostic indicators studied were humus, total nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, granulometric composition (for sand, dust, silt, and clay fractions), soil reaction (pH), carbonate content (CaCO₃), and their statistical analysis. Specifications for the six sections of the different soil profiles relied on modern tools through the determination of geographical coordinates. Determining geographical coordinates of soil samples employed the Garmin GPS map 62s. Based on the digital elevation model (DEM file), interpolating the elevation points obtained from topographic maps of previous years resulted in a new digital elevation model with low distortion. Likewise, the study has built a new relief model (in ArcGis 10.3).

Keywords: Mountain-forest cinnamon, fertility parameters, morphological descriptions, granulometric composition, soil hydrogen index, diagnostic parameters

Key findings: Mountain-forest cinnamon is one of the widespread soil types in Azerbaijan. The vital factors of that soil are fertility parameters like humus (%), nitrogen (%), CaCO₃ (%), and the sum of absorbed bases (SUB, mg-ekv), which can sustain plant growth and optimize the crop yield in that specified soil. The soil also contains elementary particles of different sizes (1-0.25, 0.25-0.05, 0.05-0.01, 0.01-0.005, 0.005-0.001, <0.001, <0.01 mm, quantity in %). The granulometric composition’s expression of the soil is the percentage of the weight of the arid soil.