Management of wood resources: A dilemma between conservation and livelihoods in a rural district in the Aral region

This study focused on black saxaul (Haloxylon aphyllum) and tamarisk (Tamarix hispida), which are economically and environmentally important trees in one of the most arid parts of the Aral region. Black saxaul is the main local fuelwood species. However, its extraction was banned after it became critically endangered in the 1990s. Planting this species is now regarded as essential for rehabilitating the Aralkum Desert in light of the Aral Sea crisis. Tamarisk is another fuelwood species that supports local livelihoods. We administered questionnaires among residents in Karateren district and conducted interviews with some residents and with policymakers responsible for regulating forest management. The findings revealed a significantly higher preference for black saxaul than for tamarisk among residents, with a high potential demand for the former. Moreover, some residents observed a decrease in tamarisk biomass, which could accelerate as a result of constant population growth in the study district. We recommend conducting an assessment of logging sites and establishing a feedback system involving local communities to develop risk management that can address future shortages in wood supplies and over logging. Political decision making should also consider the uneven preferences of residents of this region for fuelwood species

Distribution, typology and assessment of degraded soils Piedmont Plains Zhetysu Ridge, Kazakhstan

Identification of land degradation is essential to check the problem and to implement the remedial measures needed. The study area falls under parts of foothill plains Zhetysu Ridge, Kazakhstan, that is an arid region in climate. Recent data on the status of study area refer to the 80s of the last century, and the intensive use of them led to a significant anthropogenic transformation. This study was carried out in 2015-2016 as part of a project aimed to study features and causes of land degradation in foothill plains Zhetysu Ridge, Kazakhstan. Under the conditions of rainfed soil degradation manifests itself in the development of erosion processes, agro depletion of soils, reducing the productivity of agriculture. The use of land for irrigation often accompanied by secondary salinization. In this regard, at present there is need to assess current state of the soil, with the identification of changes in their properties as a result of the impact of various anthropogenic factors and creation of new electronic soil maps and applied the powerful capabilities of advanced remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) techniques to identify the geomorphological units and degradation risk assessment. Satellite imagery in addition to the field and laboratory studies to identify salinity-induced soil degradation was adopted in this study. Morphological, chemical and physical characteristics of soils in degraded sites in foothill plains Zhetysu Ridge, Kazakhstan, were depicted. The main results of a thorough evaluation of soil degradation in foothill plains Zhetysu Ridge, Kazakhstan, are presented. The data revealed that extent of salinity-induced degradation was generally related to some physical properties of soil, uncontrolled livestock grazing and previous soil management practices. These results are useful as the basis for designing soil conservation and restoration programs, as a base line for evaluating the performance of conservation programs and for assessing the impact of other soil-related activities (e.g. agriculture and livestock rising)

Soil dehydrogenase activity of natural macro aggregates in a toposequence of forest soil

The main objective of this study was to determine changes in soil dehydrogenase activity in natural macro aggregates development along a slope in forest soils. This study was carried out in Kocadag, Samsun, Turkey. Four landscape positions i.e., summit, shoulder backslope and footslope, were selected. For each landseape position, soil macro aggregates were separated into six aggregate size classes using a dry sieving method and then dehydrogenase activity was analyzed. In this research, topography influenced the macroaggregate size and dehydrogenase activity within the aggregates. At all landscape positions, the contents of macro aggregates (especially > 6.3 mm and 2.00–4.75 mm) in all soil samples were higher than other macro aggregate contents. In footslope position, the soils had generally the higher dehydrogenase activity than the other positions at all landscape positions. In all positions, except for shoulder, dehydrogenase activity was greater macro aggregates of <1 mm than in the other macro aggregate size

Gridded livestock density database and spatial trends for Kazakhstan

Abstract Livestock rearing is a major source of livelihood for food and income in dryland Asia. Increasing livestock density (LSKD) affects ecosystem structure and function, amplifies the effects of climate change, and facilitates disease transmission. Significant knowledge and data gaps regarding their density, spatial distribution, and changes over time exist but have not been explored beyond the county level. This is especially true regarding the unavailability of high-resolution gridded livestock data. Hence, we developed a gridded LSKD database of horses and small ruminants (i.e., sheep & goats) at high-resolution (1 km) for Kazakhstan (KZ) from 2000–2019 using vegetation proxies, climatic, socioeconomic, topographic, and proximity forcing variables through a random forest (RF) regression modeling. We found high-density livestock hotspots in the south-central and southeastern regions, whereas medium-density clusters in the northern and northwestern regions of KZ. Interestingly, population density, proximity to settlements, nighttime lights, and temperature contributed to the efficient downscaling of district-level censuses to gridded estimates. This database will benefit stakeholders, the research community, land managers, and policymakers at regional and national levels

Untangling the impacts of socioeconomic and climatic changes on vegetation greenness and productivity in Kazakhstan

Studies examining the joint interactions and impacts of social-environmental system (SES) drivers on vegetation dynamics in Central Asia are scarce. We investigated seasonal trends and anomalies in drivers and their impacts on ecosystem structure and function (ESF). We explored the response of net primary production, evapotranspiration and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to various SES drivers—climate, human influence, heat stress, water storage, and water content—and their latent relationships in Kazakhstan. We employed 13 predictor drivers from 2000 to 2016 to identify the interactions and impacts on ESF variables that reflect vegetation growth and productivity. We developed 12 models with different predictor–response variable combinations and separated them into two approaches. First, we considered the winter percent snow cover (SNOWc) and spring rainfall (P_MAM) as drivers and then as moderators in a structural equation model (SEM). SNOWc variability (SNOWc _SD ) as an SEM moderator exhibited superior model accuracy and explained the interactions between various predictor–response combinations. Winter SNOWc _SD did not have a strong direct positive influence on summer vegetation growth and productivity; however, it was an important moderator between human influence and the ESF variables. Spring rainfall had a stronger impact on ESF variability than summer rainfall. We also found strong positive feedback between soil moisture (SM) and NDVI, as well as a strong positive influence of vegetation optical depth (VOD) and terrestrial water storage (TWS) on ESF. Livestock density (LSK _D ) exhibited a strong negative influence on ESF. Our results also showed a strong positive influence of socioeconomic drivers, including crop yield per hectare (CROPh), gross domestic product per capita (GDPca), and population density (POP _D ) on vegetation productivity. Finally, we found that vegetation dynamics were more sensitive to SM, VOD, LSK _D and POP _D than climatic drivers, suggesting that water content and human influence drivers were more critical in Kazakhstan

Towards a Single Integrative Metric on the Dynamics of Social-Environmental Systems

Integrating the dynamics and interconnections of natural and human system properties into a single measure would make it simpler to reliably and repeatedly assess and compare different social-environmental systems (SES). We propose a novel metric to assess the magnitudes and variations in SES dynamics by integrating longitudinal gross domestic product, population, and ecosystem net primary production. We use annual public data across the Asian Drylands Belt (ADB) from 1992 through 2016 for 18 political entities as our testbed for assessing the efficacy of the metric. We perform cross-comparisons with existing natural and social science metrics to demonstrate the validity of the proposed metric, including the Human Development Index and the Palmer Drought Severity Index. The new metric demonstrates notable and meaningful differences in trends among the political entities that reflect major social, economic and environmental events over the 25-year period. It provides unique perspectives about the three pillar components (social, economic and environmental systems) in each of the 18 political entities (PE) of the ADB. The metric also shows meaningful associations with key economic and environmental indicators and great potential for broader application and evaluation, given additional testing in other countries, regions, and biomes

Towards a Single Integrative Metric on the Dynamics of Social-Environmental Systems

Integrating the dynamics and interconnections of natural and human system properties into a single measure would make it simpler to reliably and repeatedly assess and compare different social-environmental systems (SES). We propose a novel metric to assess the magnitudes and variations in SES dynamics by integrating longitudinal gross domestic product, population, and ecosystem net primary production. We use annual public data across the Asian Drylands Belt (ADB) from 1992 through 2016 for 18 political entities as our testbed for assessing the efficacy of the metric. We perform cross-comparisons with existing natural and social science metrics to demonstrate the validity of the proposed metric, including the Human Development Index and the Palmer Drought Severity Index. The new metric demonstrates notable and meaningful differences in trends among the political entities that reflect major social, economic and environmental events over the 25-year period. It provides unique perspectives about the three pillar components (social, economic and environmental systems) in each of the 18 political entities (PE) of the ADB. The metric also shows meaningful associations with key economic and environmental indicators and great potential for broader application and evaluation, given additional testing in other countries, regions, and biomes

Sustainability challenges for the social-environmental systems across the Asian Drylands Belt

This paper synthesizes the contemporary challenges for the sustainability of the social-environmental system (SES) across a geographically, environmentally, and geopolitically diverse region - the Asian Drylands Belt (ADB). This region includes 18 political entities, covering 10.3% of global land area and 30% of total global drylands. At the present time, the ADB is confronted with a unique set of environmental and socioeconomic changes including water shortage-related environmental challenges and dramatic institutional changes since the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The SES of the ADB is assessed using a conceptual framework rooted in the three pillars of sustainability science: social, economic, and ecological systems. The complex dynamics are explored with biophysical, socioeconomic, institutional, and local context-dependent mechanisms with a focus on institutions and land use and land cover change (LULCC) as important drivers of SES dynamics. This paper also discusses the following five pressing, practical challenges for the sustainability of the ADB SES: (a) reduced water quantity and quality under warming, drying, and escalating extreme events, (b) continued, if not intensifying, geopolitical conflicts, (c) volatile, uncertain, and shifting socioeconomic structures, (d) globalization and cross-country influences, and (e) intensification and shifts in LULCC. To meet the varied challenges across the region, place-based, context-dependent transdisciplinary approaches are needed to focus on the human-environment interactions within and between regional landscapes with explicit consideration of specific forcings and regulatory mechanisms. Future work focused on this region should also assess the role of the following mechanisms that may moderate SES dynamics: socioeconomic regulating mechanisms, biophysical regulating mechanisms, regional and national institutional regulating mechanisms, and localized institutional regulating mechanisms