Land-cover and Land-use Changes on the Yamal Peninsula

"Land-cover and Land-use Changes on the Yamal Peninsula, Russia" is framed within NASA’s Land-Cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program. It contributes to NASA’s global-change observations regarding the consequences of the decline in the Arctic sea ice and the greening of terrestrial vegetation that is occurring in northern latitudes. The work is also part of the Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI). It addresses the NEESPI science questions regarding the local and hemispheric effects of anthropogenic changes to land use and climate in northern Eurasia.

The overarching goal of the research is to use remote-sensing technologies to examine how the terrain and anthropogenic factors of reindeer herding and resource development, combined with the climate variations on the Yamal Peninsula, affect the spatial and temporal patterns of vegetation change and how those changes are in turn affecting traditional herding by indigenous people of the region.

The Yamal Peninsula in northern Russia has undergone extensive anthropogenic disturbance and transformation of vegetation cover over the past 20 years due to gas and oil development and overgrazing by the Nenets reindeer herds. It has been identified as a “hot spot” for both Arctic climate change and land-use change.

In the following posts we will be pleased to spread some remarkable results from these researches.