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The Fields and Farms of Central Russia as Seen from Space

  • OLD-DEVELOPED AREAS IN THE SPACE OF RUSSIA
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Abstract—

The use of satellite images in the research provides a detailed picture of shrinkage of agricultural lands in Central Russia. Since the 2000s, the concentration of agricultural production has been in the suburbs of large cities, where it takes advantage of accumulated investments, labor resources, and sales opportunities. This runs in parallel with the re-development by large enterprises in areas with better natural conditions, which are sometimes remote from major cities, but are connected with them with good roads. These trends are confirmed by maps compiled on the basis of remote sensing image interpretation. The paper presents contemporary cultivated agricultural lands and deposits highlighting differences in the degree of land abandonment between and within the regions of the Central Federal District of Russia. A methodology has been developed for determining the degree of safety of livestock complexes by the nature of the infrastructure: the state of farms, silos pits, roads, accumulations of equipment, etc. A comparison of the current state of livestock farming with the late Soviet state is carried out on the basis of a comparison of contemporary remote sensing data and large-scale topographic maps of relevant time periods. Based on these data different types of livestock enterprises have been identified: completely abandoned, partially abandoned, operating, re-developed, and new agro-industrial complexes.

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Notes

  1. Archive of the US Geological Survey—USGS (http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/) for the 2000–2014 period.

  2. Opolye is an area with better drainage conditions, soil quality, and less mosaic contours of agricultural land plots in the Non-Chernozem zone. Suzdal’skoe opolye locates in Vladimir and Ivanovo oblasts.

  3. See the article by T.G. Nefedova From City of Kostroma to the Regional Outskirts in this special issue

  4. All-Russian Agricultural Census 2016. Vol. 2. Preliminary Results of the 2016 All-Russian Agricultural Census for the federal subjects of the Russian Federation. Moscow: IIC “Statistics of Russia,” 2017. 1111 p.

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Funding

The work was carried out at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences within the framework of the project of the Russian Science Foundation no. 19-17-00174 and under the state assessment of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences AAAA-A19-119022190168-8 (FMGE-2019-0010).

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  1. Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119017, Moscow, Russia

    A. A. Medvedev

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Medvedev, A.A. The Fields and Farms of Central Russia as Seen from Space. Reg. Res. Russ. 12 (Suppl 1), S65–S73 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1134/S2079970522700344

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