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Owner: /C=DK/ST=NA/L=NA/O=IGN/OU=NA/CN=Alexander Prishchepov/emailAddress=alpr@ign.ku.dkName: Presentation was given during the 2nd International Conference on Global Food Security 2015
Description:
Potentials and constraints for cropland expansion in the former Virgin Lands Area of Kazakhstan
Presentation was given during the 2nd International Conference on Global Food Security, Ithaca, NY, October 11-14, 2015
Authors & affiliations:
Alexander V. Prishchepov12, Florian Schierhorn2, Patrick Meyfroidt3, Irina Kurganova4, Roland Kraemer5,6, Tobias Kuemmerle7,8, Brett Hankerson2, Daniel Müller2,7,8
1 Department of Geosciences and Natural Resources Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, (alpr@ign.ku.dk, corresponding author)
2 Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Halle (Saale), Germany
3FRS-FNRS & Earth and Life Institute, University of Louvain, Louvain, Belgium
4 Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Pushchino, Russia
5 Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, Germany
6German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
7 Geography Department, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
8 Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys), Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Global agricultural production will need to supply food and bioenergy in the upcoming decades due to growth of population, but crop yields are stagnating, soil degradation is widespread. Further cropland expansion can be achieved at the expense of biodiversity rich frontiers. At the same time abandoned agricultural lands are common around the world. Among such countries with widespread abandonment is post-Soviet Kazakhstan, where 14 million hectares of croplands became abandoned from 1991 to 2010 following the transition from state-command to market-driven economies. It is often believed that some of such lands hold untapped agricultural potential. Our major goal was to assess long-term dynamics of land-cover change and suitability of abandoned croplands for cropland re-cultivation and associated trade-offs, such as implication of such re-cultivation for terrestrial carbon balance.
For our work we concentrated on Northern Kazakhstan, one of the major breadbaskets in Northern Eurasia. First, we assessed long-term land-cover dynamics for entire Northern Kazakhstan from 1953 to 2010 using archival land-use maps for 1953 and 1961 depicting cropland expansion during Virgin Lands Campaign and 250-m MODIS Land-cover maps for 2000 and 2010.
We complemented our broad-scale assessment of land-cover change trajectories for entire Northern Kazakhstan with detailed land-cover change analysis in Kostanay province, which is representative for Northern Kazakhstan, by combining archival land-cover maps for 1953 and 1961 and land-cover maps produced with multi-temporal 30-meter Landsat TM/ETM+ images for 1990-2000-2010. Second, for Kostanay province we collected detailed socio-economic and biophysical parameters and accessed determinants of cropland abandonment and cropland re-cultivation with spatially-explicit logistic regressions and boosted regression trees. Then, using results from model built for Kostanay province, we projected suitability for cropland re-cultivation for entire Northern Kazakhstan. Using our earlier assessments of sequestered carbon on abandoned lands in Northern Kazakhstan and livestock dynamics, we assessed trade-offs among potentials for cropland expansion and alternative land uses.
Our analyses showed, there was precipitous cropland expansion during the Virgin Lands Campaign from 1954 till 1961 in Northern Kazakhstan, when approximately 23 million ha of primarily virgin steppes were converted into cropland. There was subsequent cropland expansion until 1990 followed by massive agricultural land abandonment during the transition. Our analyses showed, most croplands which were abandoned after 1991 were lands which were ploughed after the peak of Virgin Lands Campaign in 1961 and allocated primarily to marginal soils for crop production. Our results also showed ongoing re-cultivation of abandoned lands after 2000, at the expense of relatively favorable soils.
Our spatially-explicit econometric models showed, biophysical factors largely determined massive land-cover change such as cropland expansion during the Campaign and further agricultural abandonment after the breakup of the Soviet Union and overrun the proximate socio-economic determinants of land-cover change.
New state-driven agricultural program “Kazakhstan-2020” is targeting to increase agricultural production and livestock numbers, also at the expense of abandoned lands. Once we projected our modelling results about suitability of cropland expansion based on assessed determinants of land-cover change and contrasted with sequestered carbon on abandoned lands, we came to the conclusion, despite of common belief about untapped agricultural potential of abandoned croplands in Kazakhstan, that our study showed how limited such potential is. Only one third from 14 million hectares of abandoned croplands is feasible to be re-cultivated based on cropland suitability. If also to account for sequestered carbon on idle croplands after 20 years of abandonment, only one millions of hectares of abandoned croplands is feasible to bring back for cropland production. If increasing production is a goal, improving crop yields on currently cultivated lands should be a focus, whereas extensive livestock grazing and the preservation of non-provisioning ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, and biodiversity conservation should be priority on more marginal lands.
Date: 2015-10-21 16:42:10.106785
