Skip to main content
Long-Term Land Degradation in the Caucasus
Project Start Date
01/01/2018
Project End Date
12/31/2022
Grant Number
80NSSC18K0316
Project Call Name
Region
Solicitation
default

Team Members:

Person Name Person role on project Affiliation
Volker Radeloff Principal Investigator University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, US
Van Butsic Co-Investigator University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, USA
Tobias Kuemmerle Collaborator Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
Hovik Sayadyan Collaborator Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia
Mihai Daniel Nita Collaborator Brasov University, Brasov, Romania
Abstract

Land degradation, both of forest and in grasslands, is widespread in the Caucasus, and a major environmental challenge. However, land degradation is more difficult to monitor with satellite imagery than, for example, outright land use conversion or forest disturbance. One reason is that understanding land use change and land degradation trends greatly benefits from long-term land use data, but assessing land use prior to the Landsat record is challenging. However, once those technical obstacles are overcome, studying land degradation can greatly advance land use science. The reason is that land degradation patterns in peripheral areas can be greatly affected by demand for resources from the cores of economic activity, especially in countries where ample oil and gas reserves foster rapid growth of their cores, and studying degradation patterns thus allows to investigate core-periphery relationships. This is why we propose here to:

a) develop new remote sensing approaches to monitor degradation that are based on a) the integration of multiple years of Landsat data while accounting for phenology, and b), changes in endmember mixtures, phenology metrics, and the classification likelihood of a given land cover class, in order to map forest and grassland degradation across Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia;

b) apply new methods to rectify 1960s and ‘70s Corona data semi-automatically with structure-from-motion software, and develop new methods to classify Corona data with image segmentation; and

c) examine the effects of economic cores, especially those related to oil and gas development, on land use in the peripheries in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. This proposal builds upon a LCLUC project by PI Radeloff on land use change and the effect of wars in the Caucasus that will end in February of 2018, i.e., right when the work proposed here would start. The current project, now in its third year, has been highly successful, and highlighted that while land use conversions are uncommon, land degradation is widespread. The new work proposed here will build upon our findings, and extend them further. We will create wall-to-wall maps of land degradation, examine long-term LCLUC via the analysis of Corona imagery, and advance the understanding of core-periphery relationships and the effects of oil and gas development as drivers of land use patterns. Our project will make extensive use of NASA remote sensing assets, develop new remote sensing methods, and advance land use science via the collaboration of remote sensing specialists, economists, and experts from the Caucasus region.

Project Research Area

Project Documents

Year Authors Type Title
2022 Volker Radeloff Publications Rizayeva, A., M. D. Nita, and V. C. Radeloff. 2023. Large-area, 1960s land cover classifications of Corona spy satellite imagery for the Caucasus Mountains. Remote Sensing of Environment, 284: 113343. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425722004497
2020 Publications Lewinska, K. E., P. Hostert, J. Buchner, B. Bleyhl, and V. C. Radeloff. 2020. Short-term vegetation loss versus decadal degradation of grasslands in the Caucasus based on Cumulative Endmember Fractions. Remote Sensing of Environment, 248: 111969.
2020 Johanna Buchner He Yin Publications Buchner, J., H. Yin, D. Frantz, T. Kuemmerle, B. Bleyhl, T. Bakuradze, N. Elizbarashvili, A. Komarova, K. E. Lewińska, A. Rizayeva, H. Sayadyan, B. Tan, G. Tepanosyan, N. Zazanashvili, and V. C. Radeloff. 2020. Land-cover change in the Caucasus Mountains since 1987 based on the topographic correction of multi-temporal Landsat composites. Remote Sensing of Environment, 248: 111967.
2019 Volker Radeloff NASA LCLUC Science Team Presentation Long-Term Degradation in Caucasus
2019 Publications Bleyhl, B., M. Arakelyan, E. Askerov, H. Bluhm, A. Gavashelishvili, M. Ghasabyan, A. Ghoddousi, A. Heidelberg, I. Khorozyan, A. Malkhasyan, K. Manvelyan, M. Masoud, E. M. Moqanaki, V. C. Radeloff, M. Soofi, P. Weinberg, N. Zazanashvili, and T. Kuemmerle. 2019. Assessing niche overlap between domestic and threatened wild sheep to identify conservation priority areas. Diversity and Distributions, 25: 129-141.
2019 He Yin Van Butsic Publications Yin, H., V. Butsic, J. Buchner, T. Kuemmerle, A. V. Prishchepov, M. Baumann, E. V. Bragina, H. Saydyan, and V. C. Radeloff. 2019. Agricultural abandonment and re-cultivation during and after the Chechen Wars in the northern Caucasus. Global Environmental Change, 55: 149-159.