TY  - JOUR
AB  - The transition from a command to a market economy resulted in widespread cropland abandonment across the former Soviet Union during the 1990s. Spatial patterns and determinants of abandonment are comparatively well understood for European Russia, but have not yet been assessed for the vast grain belt ofWestern Siberia, situated in the Eurasian forest steppe. This is unfortunate, as land-use change in Western Siberia is of global significance: Fertile black earth soils and vast mires store large amounts of organic carbon, and both undisturbed and traditional cultural landscapes harbor threatened biodiversity. We compared Landsat images from ca. 1990 (before the break-up of the Soviet Union) and ca. 2015 (current situation) with a supervised classification to estimate the extent and spatial distribution of abandoned cropland. We used logistic regression models to reveal important determinants of cropland abandonment. Ca. 135,000 ha classified as cropland around 1990 were classified as grassland around 2015. This suggests that ca. 20% of all cropland remain abandoned ca. 25 years after the end of the Soviet Union. Abandonment occurred mostly at poorly drained sites. The likelihood of cropland abandonment increased with decreasing soil quality, and increasing distance to medium-sized settlements, roads and railroads. We conclude that soil suitability, access to transport infrastructure and availability of workforce are key determinants of cropland abandonment inWestern Siberia.
AU  - Nguyen, Ho
AU  - Hölzel, Norbert
AU  - Völker, Andreas
AU  - Kamp, Johannes
DA  - 2018-12-07
DO  - 10.3390/rs10121973
KW  - land-cover change
KW  - land-use change
KW  - grassland
KW  - market accessibility
KW  - forest steppe
KW  - recultivation
KW  - transition
LA  - eng
N1  - Remote Sensing 10 (2018) 12, 1973, 1-17
N1  - Finanziert durch den Open-Access-Publikationsfonds 2018 der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) und der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU Münster).
PY  - 2018-12-07
TI  - Patterns and Determinants of Post-Soviet Cropland Abandonment in the Western Siberian Grain Belt
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:6-85169650153
Y2  - 2024-12-27T07:22:35
ER  -