Land-use and land-cover change effects on biodiversity in European Russia (LUCC-BIO)
Final Report Abstract
The intention of LUCC-BIO was to use satellite images to quantify rates and spatial patterns of post-Soviet land use change at the landscape scale (with a focus on selected protected areas where long-term biodiversity time series exist). Overall research questions were: (1) How effective were protected areas after the collapse of the Soviet Union? (2) What is the relationship between post-Soviet land use change inside and outside protected areas and wildlife habitat? (3) How does post-Soviet land use change in the surrounding of protected areas affect wildlife populations within protected areas? We accordingly acquired and analyzed the needed field data / archive data and a time series of Landsat satellite imagery. Based on the latter, we assessed land use and land cover changes from 1984 to 2010 and compared results in a stratified manner for areas inside and outside the respective zapovedniks, including a rigorous accuracy assessment. We also adjusted our inside-outside comparisons for differences in environmental settings based on matching and post-matching regression statistics. Thematically, we focused on forest change (e.g. through major wild fires), agricultural land use change (e.g. land abandonment after the fall of socialism) and landscape pattern change (e.g. habitat fragmentation). Our results suggest a relatively high effectiveness of the two strictly protected areas regarding human-induced logging. However, we could also show the increasing impact of forest fires, particularly the extreme wildfires in 2010 resulted in extensive forest disturbances in the nature reserves. The relatively high effectiveness of protected areas we found is surprising, given the dramatic reorganization of the institutional setup, including the framework for nature protection, in Russia during the 1990s. We acquired and analyzed a wide range of biodiversity data and as well as valuable longterm winter track count data for Canis lupus,Sus scrofa, and Alces alces in Oksky State Nature Reserve. Next to insights into species number and foraging ground development, we learned that the breakdown of the Soviet Union shifted population dynamics in marked ways, leading e.g. to an increased moose population, possibly due to increasing availability of early succession shrublands and forests that are important forage grounds for moose. Similarly, we retrieved deeper insights on social structures and the predator-prey interactions between wild boar and wolf. Due to the wealth of insights gained during the short project lifetime and the unique datasets retrieved from Russian archives since the start of LUCC-BIO, a collaborative German-Russian follow-up proposal is in the making.
Publications
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(2010). Post- Soviet land-use change and the effectiveness of protected areas in European Russia. Fourth EARSeL SIG Land-Use & Land-Cover Workshop, Prague, Czech Republic, 01-04 June 2011
Sieber, A., Kuemmerle, T., Prishchepov, A.V., Radeloff, V.C., & P. Hostert
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(2011). Post-Soviet land-use change and the effectiveness of protected areas in European Russia. 4th Workshop on Land Use & Land Cover, EARSeL, Prague, June 2011
Sieber, A., Kuemmerle, T., Prishchepov, A.V., Baskin, L.M., Radeloff, V.C., Hostert, P.
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(2012). Effects of institutional changes on land use: agricultural land abandonment during the transition from statecommand to market-driven economies in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. Environmental Research Letters, 7, 024021
Prishchepov, A.V., Radeloff, V.C., Baumann, M. and Kuemmerle, T.
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(2012). Population declines in game mammals after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Wildlife Society Annual Conference, September 2012, Portland, USA
Bragina, E.V., Ives, A. R., Pidgeon, A. M., Keuler, N., Kuemmerle, T., Piquer-Rodriguez, M., and Radeloff, V. C.
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(2013). Landsat-based mapping of post-Soviet land-use change to assess the effectiveness of the Oksky and Mordovsky protected areas in European Russia. Remote Sensing of Environment, 133, 38–51
Sieber, A., Kuemmerle, T., Prishchepov, A.V., Wendland, K.J., Baumann, M., Baskin, L.M., Radeloff, V.C., Hostert, P.
