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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. Objectives Biodiversity Socio- economics Land cover

9. Approach  Current land cover from MODIS data  Separating plowed from fallow fields with spectral mixture analysis of MODIS reflectance data Landcover in the study area

10. Approach  Land cover change analysis with Landsat TM/ETM+ data  1985 to 2002 data Landsat sample scenes

11. Landsat TM Sep. 2000 RGB: 4,5,3

12. Landsat TM 1985-88

13. Classification based on TM & ETM+ data from 2000 Landsat TM/ETM+ 2000

14. state farms (until 1990) Poland Slovakia

15. Objectives Biodiversity Socio- economics Land cover

16. 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

17. 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

18. Objectives Biodiversity Socio- economics Land cover

19. Approach  Wildlife habitat analysis for three species of conservation concern  European Bison  Saiga antelope  Brown Bear  Umbrella species for biodiversity Radio-collared bison in the Slovak Carpathians, Dec. 2004

20. Approach  Radio-collar locations as input for resource- selection functions  Habitat variables include land cover, fragmentation indices, and settlements Saiga with satellite radio-collar

21. Approach  Radio-collar locations as input for resource- selection functions  Habitat variables include land cover, fragmentation indices, and settlements

22. Approach  Bear data is collected from local hunting departments via an ArcGIS server  This allows online digitizing of bear activity and easy data transfer Arc/GIS server for bear mapping

23. Objectives Biodiversity Socio- economics Land cover

24. Timeline YearMilestones 2005 MODIS/TM image processing, socioeconomic data collecting, wildlife occurrence data collecting 2006 MODIS/TM image processing, regression LCLUC versus socioeconomics, habitat analysis 2007 Accuracy assessment, future scenarios simulations, journal articles, web page dissemination

25. 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

26. Questions? Biodiversity Socio- economics Land cover