PostUSSR land cover change in Eastern Europe

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Post-USSR land cover change in Eastern Europe
socioeconomic forcings, effects on biodiversity
and future scenarios
Volker Radeloff University of Wisconsin-Madison
Funded by A
NEESPI Project
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Background

• Rapid land cover change in Eastern European since
  the breakdown of the USSR
• Widespread agricultural abandonment followed by
  conversion to shrublands and forest

Agricultural area change from 1991 to 1997 USDA
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Background

• Socio-economic trends differ markedly among
  neighboring countries with similar ecological
  conditions

Change in nighttime lights 1993-2000.
Yellow/red more lights, blue fewer lights,
NOAA-NESDIS
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Background

• A natural experiment in Eastern Europe allows
  to test hypotheses on the relative importance of
  environmental versus socioeconomic factors as
  controls and forcings of land cover and land
  cover change and thereby on biodiversity

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Objectives

• Monitor land cover and land use change (LCLUC) in
  Eastern Europe
• Examine socioeconomic and political changes as
  forcing functions for LCLUC
• Examine effects of LCLUC on biodiversity
• Simulate future LCLUC scenarios and examine
  potential biodiversity effects

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Objectives
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Approach

• Current land cover from MODIS data
• Separating plowed from fallow fields with
  spectral mixtureanalysis of MODISreflectance
  data

Landcover in the study area
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Approach

• Land cover change analysis with Landsat TM/ETM
  data
• 1985 to 2002 data

Landsat sample scenes
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Landsat TM1985-88
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Landsat TM/ETM2000
Classificationbased on TM ETM data from 2000
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Poland
state farms (until 1990)
Slovakia
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Objectives
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Approach

• Regression analysis to identify forcing and
  controls of LCLUC
• Socioeconomic variables
• GDP, land ownership, urban markets, employment,
  population, housing, and households, agricultural
  statistics, country
• Environmental variables
• Climate, topography, soils

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Approach

• Hypothesis Agricultural abandonment is
  controlled at broad scales by national economic
  and political conditions, and by climate
  patterns,and at fine scales by distance to urban
  markets, distance to major roads, topography, and
  soil quality

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Objectives
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Approach

• Wildlife habitat analysis for three species of
  conservation concern
• European Bison
• Saiga antelope
• Brown Bear
• Umbrella speciesfor biodiversity

Radio-collared bison in the Slovak Carpathians,
Dec. 2004
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Approach

• Radio-collar locationsas input for
  resource-selection functions
• Habitat variables include land
  cover,fragmentation indices, and settlements

Saiga with satellite radio-collar
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Approach

• Radio-collar locationsas input for
  resource-selection functions
• Habitat variables include land
  cover,fragmentation indices, and settlements

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Approach

• Bear data is collected from local hunting
  departments viaan ArcGIS server
• This allows onlinedigitizing of bearactivity
  and easydata transfer

Arc/GIS server for bear mapping
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Objectives
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Timeline
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Collaborators

• NGOs
• WWF
• Large Herbivore Foundation
• Scientists
• L. Balciauskas, Vilnius University, Lithuania
• L. Baskin, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
• P. Hostert, and T. Kümmerle, Humboldt University
• A. Lushchekina, Russian MAB Program, Moscow
• K. Perzanowski, Polish Academy of Sciences
• W. Schröder, Technical University, Munich

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Questions?