Introduction. In the Republic of Kalmykia, agriculture is characterized by the prevalence of livestock breeding. Still, excessive grazing has resulted in land degradation. Materials. Analysis of buried soils from excavated kurgans reveals that the Late Bronze Age and Late Medieval Period witnessed extensive desertification processes across vast territories of Eastern European steppes. Those trends were determined by global climate aridization traced in other ecosystems too, i.e. were caused by natural changes. Results. Present-day desertification also takes place in the background of universal aridization but its enormous scale and destructiveness are aggravated by multiple anthropogenic impacts, i.e. human activity. For a qualitative assessment, the paper analyzes a time-series of satellite images made by Landsat-TM Earth observing sensor from 1985 to 2011, and makes statistical estimates of related NDVI and TGSI indices. There is an increase in vegetation cover within the investigated area, and this despite the fact that yearly temperatures during the period kept increasing, too. So, the reduced desertification rates have resulted not from favorable climatic factors but rather from purposeful countervailing efforts.