TY - JOUR

T1 - Multiple trajectories of grassland fragmentation, degradation, and recovery in Russia's steppes

AU - Prishchepov, Alexander V.

AU - Myachina, Ksenia V.

AU - Kamp, Johannes

AU - Smelansky, Ilya

AU - Dubrovskaya, Svetlana

AU - Ryakhov, Roman

AU - Grudinin, Dmitriy

AU - Yakovlev, Ilya

AU - Urazaliyev, Ruslan

N1 - Funding Information: The authors acknowledge funding of the EU FP7 ERA.Net Russia Plus (grant number: 449 CLIMASTEPPE) and DFF‐Danish ERC Support Program (grant number: 116491, 9127‐00001B). The authors also acknowledge funding Goszadanie of Institute of Steppe “Problems of steppe management in the conditions of modern challenges: optimization of the interaction between environmental and socio‐economic systems” No. AAAA‐A21‐121011190016‐1. The authors thank Oleg Bandler, Victor Fedosov, Maria Fokina, Galina Savchenko, Tatiana Zharkih, and Igor Karyakin for their expert evaluations of disturbance impacts on the habitats of selected species as well as Nikolai Sobolev for constructive discussion. We also thank four anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and time. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Over the 20th century, the Eurasian steppes underwent drastic land-cover changes. Much progress was made studying cropland expansion and the post-1990 (i.e., post-Soviet) agricultural land abandonment in Eurasia. However, the alteration of steppe landscapes may include other disturbances, such as oil and gas development, formal and informal roads and garbage dumps, which were not systematically documented. Considering the example of the steppe Orenburg Province in Russia, we reconstructed agricultural land-cover change dynamics using Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery from 1990 to 2018. Furthermore, we used very high-resolution imagery and assessed the patterns and determinants of other steppe landscape anthropogenic disturbances. Our study showed that, despite steppe recovery due to widespread cropland abandonment from 1990 to 2018, the steppes, including the recovered steppe patches, underwent fragmentation due to informal roads, oil and gas development, shrub encroachment, garbage dumps and quarries, as well as abandonment of settlements and buildings. Only 6.4% of the sampled 7859 1×1 km blocks in 2018 showing grassland extent had no documented disturbances. The mapped disturbances occurred primarily near settlements and roads, while some disturbances occurred in remote areas. Given the accessibility of steppes, our study calls for a urgent need to systematically document alternatives to agricultural land uses in the steppes of Eurasia and other parts of the global grassland biome.

AB - Over the 20th century, the Eurasian steppes underwent drastic land-cover changes. Much progress was made studying cropland expansion and the post-1990 (i.e., post-Soviet) agricultural land abandonment in Eurasia. However, the alteration of steppe landscapes may include other disturbances, such as oil and gas development, formal and informal roads and garbage dumps, which were not systematically documented. Considering the example of the steppe Orenburg Province in Russia, we reconstructed agricultural land-cover change dynamics using Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery from 1990 to 2018. Furthermore, we used very high-resolution imagery and assessed the patterns and determinants of other steppe landscape anthropogenic disturbances. Our study showed that, despite steppe recovery due to widespread cropland abandonment from 1990 to 2018, the steppes, including the recovered steppe patches, underwent fragmentation due to informal roads, oil and gas development, shrub encroachment, garbage dumps and quarries, as well as abandonment of settlements and buildings. Only 6.4% of the sampled 7859 1×1 km blocks in 2018 showing grassland extent had no documented disturbances. The mapped disturbances occurred primarily near settlements and roads, while some disturbances occurred in remote areas. Given the accessibility of steppes, our study calls for a urgent need to systematically document alternatives to agricultural land uses in the steppes of Eurasia and other parts of the global grassland biome.

KW - disturbance

KW - enchroachment

KW - grasslands

KW - informal roads

KW - land abandonment

KW - land-cover change

KW - machine-learning

KW - mining

KW - oil and gas development

KW - recultivation

KW - remote sensing

KW - satellite imagery

KW - steppes

U2 - 10.1002/ldr.3976

DO - 10.1002/ldr.3976

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85105921975

VL - 32

SP - 3220

EP - 3235

JO - Land Degradation and Development

JF - Land Degradation and Development

SN - 1085-3278

IS - 11

ER -