Land conversions and bioproductivity trends in semiarid regions of European Russia in the context of Land Degradation Neutrality targetsтезисы докладаТезисы
Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 22 февраля 2019 г.
Аннотация:Semiarid steppe regions of European Russia are highly sensitive areas to land
degradation under unstable precipitation regimes, widespread and versatile agricultural
activities. In the context of setting and achieving land degradation neutrality (LDN) targets now
adopted at the national level this regions can play a key role and be considered as a model to
elaborate scientific and methodological framework for evaluation and monitoring of land-based
natural capital.
Our research aims at the retrospective analysis of land use/land cover changes (LULCC)
and land productivity dynamics in study area for the 1992-2015. To reveal and explain the
spatially explicit picture of these multidirectional trends contradictory land reforms and
ongoing climate change throughout the whole area in study we use long-term time series of
consistent geospatial gridded data with 300 m resolution: sum annual NDVI time series as a
proxy of biological productivity of semiarid ecosystems and annual land cover maps from ESA
CCI LC product. Initial global land cover classes and logically acceptable transitions between
them for the period were aggregate and interpret from the point of view existing diversity of
land use/land cover patterns of the study area.
The spatial distribution of different types of land use\land cover changes and significant
trends in sum annual NDVI are highly heterogeneous throughout the semiarid regions of
European Russia. The more evident and full-scale dynamics of LULCC is revealed for the dry
steppes and deserted steppes of the Northern Caucasus and Lower Volga. Between the dominant
types of land transitions and consistent trends in productivity prevailed positive or neutral in context of land degradation tendencies: i) grassland expansion with strong positive NDVI trend
in the 2000–2015 at the place of fully degraded in 1992-2000 rangelands in the NW Caspian
region; ii) conversion from extensive pastures to productive croplands in the eastern part of
Northern Caucasus. Negative trends in LULCC and NDVI are fixed mainly for the southeastern
parts of study region (dry steppes of Low Zavolzhie) where transition from grasslands
to sparse vegetation and consistent decline in bioproductivity can be rather explained with
aridization of regional climate from the 1990s than anthropogenic activities.