Context Agricultural land abandonment across the steppe belt of Eurasia has provided an opportunity for the restoration of steppe landscapes in recent decades. However, global food demands are about to revert this trajectory and put restored steppe landscapes at risk. Objectives We analysed steppe development in southern Russia in the last 40 years, assessed its spatial patterns and drivers of change for several periods. Methods Using Landsat imagery, we mapped the permanent steppe and steppe restoration from 1990 to 2018. Based on regression tree models, we evaluate and explain its dynamics. Results were compared with district-level trends in land-use intensities of cropland. Results We found 70% of the steppe in 2018 represented permanent steppe and 30% of former cropland dominantly abandoned in the postsocialism (1990–2000). The permanent steppe and steppe restored in the postsocialism (1990–2000) were located far from settlements, on rough terrain and in districts of the Virgin Land Campaign (1954–1963). In recent decades, the patterns of steppe restoration (2000–2018) were mostly determined by unfavourable agroclimatic conditions and distance from grain storage facilities. The restoration pattern reflects regional differences in land-use intensities, e.g., isolated steppe patches mostly appeared in areas of intensive agricultural land-use. Conclusions Steppe restoration has appeared in areas marginal for agricultural production, with poor natural conditions and little human footprint. Consequently, the permanent steppe became less fragmented and a more continuous steppe landscape resulted. The remaining isolated steppe patches require attention in restoration programs as they are mostly located in areas of intensive agricultural land-use.

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The Orenburg region is a multi-ethnic region with a large proportion of inter-ethnic marriages. The authors conducted the sociological survey in order to determine the specifics of national identity of children from interethnic families in Orenburg region and identify trends in the formation of national identity. The survey allowed to make conclusions: ethnic self-determination in such families is developing in the form of refusal to associate a person with a certain ethnic group. At the same time, this form of ethnic self-determination is observed not only in inter-ethnic families, where it prevails, but also in single-ethnic families. According to the authors, we are witnessing a process of transition from a traditional society with mandatory registration of ethnicity by birth to a modern civil nation, with a freer attitude to ethnic self-identification, which was launched by the abolition of mandatory indication of nationality in the passport during the Soviet period.

As a result of the USSR collapse new state borders emerged and cut through the previously uniform space of the country. The emergence of these new borders gives scholars a chance to track their influence on social and economic space on an example of population settlement pattern dynamics. The interfaced analysis of the settlement pattern on both sides of the state border is of special interest. The uniform geographical database of the population censuses on the territory of the Orenburg region and the three bordering Kazakhstan regions (the West Kazakhstan, Aktyubinsk and Kostanay) has formed the information base of the research. The population settlement pattern indicators of the region and the frontier zone were compared during the analysis. The geoinformation technologies, in particular the analysis tool of «hot» and «cold» points of the population settlements dynamics were used. As a result of the analysis similarity in the settlement pattern dynamics in the frontier zones and on the territory of the region was revealed. The study hypothesized that the advancing outflow of the population from the frontier zone as a result of the barrier function of the «new» state border and the «skeletization» of the settlement pattern is to the result of the deterioration in the conditions of economic activity and the difficulty of social contacts. This hypothesis did not find confirmation as the settlement zones with positive and negative dynamics proved to be transfrontier and symmetric in regard to the border. The opportuneness degree of natural and social-economic conditions of the territory plays a significant role in the settlement pattern dynamics nature.