Assessing ecosystem services of abandoned agricultural lands: a case study in the forested zone of European Russia

Abstract

The massive abandonment of arable land in Russia in the 1990s had a heavy impact on the country’s land-use structure. The cessation of cultivation leads to a decrease of provisioning ecosystem services within the landscape, while creating an opportunity to enhance the supply of diverse regulation services. Consideration of this opportunity is increasingly important for environmental management and landscape planning. In this article, we present an approach for assessing the environmental benefits of ecosystems developing on abandoned arable lands in the forested zone of European Russia. The proposed methodology is established on a land-cover based framework – ecosystem services assessment matrix. For assessment purposes, abandoned arable lands at different stages of vegetation recovery succession (ruderal, grassland and small-leaved forest) are considered as different land-cover types. Four classes of regulating ecosystem services are subject to qualitative analysis: regulation of the chemical composition of the atmosphere, control of erosion rates, regulation of soil quality and pollination. An exemplary application of the proposed methodology for the case study area located in the Moscow Region of Russia is presented in the article. The results of the qualitative assessment revealed an association between the stage of vegetation recovery succession which corresponds with the time since land abandonment and the supply of regulating ecosystem services. The recovery of natural vegetation leads to higher levels of carbon sequestration, more effective erosion mitigation, soil recovery and increased pollinator abundance. Cropland was proven to be a recipient of the services provided by natural ecosystems. Thus, the return of all uncultivated fields to agricultural use will cause a substantial decrease in the ecological value of the study area.

How individual scores affect the final expert-based assessments of ecosystem services: Range and mean scores analysis of natural heritage supply maps

“…According to the expert assessment these are the "Scientific and educational value" (3.25) and "Aesthetic experiences" (3.23). There are many studies regarding the assessment of the ecosystem's potential to provide ES (Anpilogova et al, 2022;Grigorov, 2021;Kaziukonyte et al, 2021;Burkhard et al, 2009, etc. ), but there is limited research about the potential of the ES for recreation (Nikolova et al, 2020;Kamenov et al, 2017, Osipova et al, 2014.…”

“…The findings of their paper suggest that the number of the studies using the ES matrix approach has increased more than 10 times for the last 10 years (until 2019). Various studies applied the matrix approach for different assessments, for example in abandoned agricultural lands (Anpilogova and Pakina (2022), cross-border assessments (Sieber et al 2021), local scale assessment (Nedkov et al 2017, Grigorov, 2021, Zhiyanski et al 2021, experimental mapping (Prodanova,2021), a tiered approach of urban ecosystems (Nedkov et al, 2018), and for studying the recreational ecosystem services from stakeholders' perspective by (Seijo et al 2021, Bezak andBezakova, 2014). Some of these studies, such as Jacobs and Burkhard (2017), Roche and Campagne (2019), Ma et al (2019), Perrenes et al (2020), Sieber et al (2021) have analyzed the perceptions of different groups of people for ecosystems and the services they provide.…”

Estimation of Carbon Stocks of Birch Forests on Abandoned Arable Lands in the Cis-Ural Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Mounted LiDAR Camera

“…In most cases, abandoned croplands have become overgrown with fast-growing tree species with high seed production. The species diversity of trees on abandoned arable lands depends mainly on the availability of seed sources, the species composition of the adjacent forest stands, soil fertility, and the utilization regime before and after cessation of plowing [14,15].…”