A Conceptual Framework for Ecosystem Stewardship Based on Landscape Dynamics: Case Studies from Kazakhstan and Mongolia

Abstract

Given the importance of Northern Eurasia for global ecosystem and climate processes, improved characterization of land cover and land-cover change in the region is a scientific priority. Most studies on Central Asia focus on the changes in land cover and land use rather than on landscape dynamics. This chapter gives an overview of approaches and existing frameworks to describing landscape dynamics. The landscape dynamics are presented by state variables. Potential state variables are for example, NDVI, GPP, NPP, fPAR, or LAI. The progression of a state variable might fluctuate over time in response to disturbance and succession processes and fluctuate within a “natural range of change or variability”. This range of variability is also called as the “normal multiple states operating range” of a state variable. It is important to note that this range of variability is relative to a specific spatial and temporal scale. We present two case studies, one from Kazakhstan and one from Mongolia, which show different results in the course of important state variables (e.g. NDVI). The analysis of changes in vegetation indices in Kazakhstan (differential – NDVI, VCI and integral – IVI, IVCI), computed over the territory of Kazakhstan for the period 2000–2016, shows that the values of integrated indices of vegetation have an expressed tendency to decrease. While long-term NDVI trends in Mongolia, typically analyzed using AVHRR or MODIS data starting from the early 1980s, have often been described as negative, we could show that this is not true anymore in recent years. Both case studies show that Land-use change modelling is a highly dynamic field of research with many new developments. The main current developments presented in these special case studies concern progress in modelling of scale dependency of drivers of land-use / cover change.