Eastern European land cover has changed substantially since the breakdown of the USSR in 1990 ň In some areas more than half of the farmland has been abandoned and is converting to shrublands and forest ň Eastern Europe is ‘re-wilding’ and that offers opportunities for biodiversity conservation ň This project will assess habitat change affecting umbrella species for biodiversity ň Socio-economic trends and land cover change differ markedly among neighboring countries with similar ecological conditions ň This provides the opportunity to study transboundary differences in space ň The comparison of pre- and post-1990 land cover change provides data on transboundary phenomena in time The project uses this ‘natural experiment’ to test hypotheses on the relative importance of environmental versus socioeconomic factors as controls and forcings of land cover and land use change