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Dry Land Belt of Northern Eurasia: Contemporary Environmental Changes

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Landscape Dynamics of Drylands across Greater Central Asia: People, Societies and Ecosystems

Part of the book series: Landscape Series ((LAEC,volume 17))

Abstract

The Dry Land Belt (DLB) of Northern Eurasia is the largest contiguous dryland on Earth. Changes in DLB during the last century have included resource extraction (e.g., coal, oil, gas, and mineral ores), rapid land cover and land use change (e.g., expansion of irrigated croplands and cities), institutional shifts (e.g., collapse of the Soviet Union, China’s entry to the World Trade Organization), global and regional climatic changes, and natural disturbances (e.g., wildfire, drought, dust). These factors intertwine, overlap, and sometimes mitigate but sometimes feedback to each other exacerbating their synergistic and cumulative effects. Thus, it is important to document properly the key external and internal factors and to characterize structural relationships among them to study better approaches to alleviating negative consequences of these regional environmental changes. This chapter addresses key climatic changes observed over the DLB in recent decades and it outlines possible linkages of these changes with other external and internal factors of the contemporary regional environmental change and human activities within the DLB.

Olga N. Bulygina was deceased at the time of publication.

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Acknowledgements

P. Groisman and G. Henebry were supported in part by NASA grant NNX15AP81G. N. Tchebakova acknowledges the Russian Foundation for Basic Research grant 16-05-00496 and the Russian Science Foundation grant 18-17-00069. O. Zolina, A. Dufour, and P. Groisman were partially supported through “ARCTIC-ERA: ARCTIC climate change and its impact on Environment, infrastructures, and Resource Availability” sponsored by ANR (France), RFBR (Russia), and US NSF (grants 1717770 and 1558389). Y. Chen was supported by National Youth Science Fund of China grant 1701227 and by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions in China. Work of A. Shiklomanov was partially supported by U.S. NSF Grant 1602879 and Russian RFFI Grant 18-05-60240. Grant 14.B25.31.0026 of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation provided support to P. Groisman, N. Tilinina, A. Shiklomanov, O. Bulygina, and O. Zolina for their work conducted at the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology. The synthesis workshop (Ulaan Baatar, June 2017) was partially sponsored by the “Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems” Program of the NSF (#1313761) and the LCLUC program of NASA (NNX15AD10G).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. North Carolina State University at NOAA National Centers for Environment Information, Asheville, NC, USA

    Pavel Ya. Groisman

  2. P.P Shirshov Institute for Oceanology, RAS, Moscow, Russia

    Pavel Ya. Groisman & Natalia D. Tilinina

  3. Hydrology Science and Services Corp, Asheville, NC, USA

    Pavel Ya. Groisman

  4. All-Russian Research Institute for Hydrometeorological Information, Obninsk, Russia

    Olga N. Bulygina & Jiquan Chen

  5. Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Geoffrey M. Henebry

  6. State Hydrological Institute, Basil Island, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Nina A. Speranskaya

  7. Earth Systems Research Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA

    Alexander I. Shiklomanov

  8. Joint Innovation Center for Modern Forestry Studies, College of Biology and the Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

    Yizhao Chen

  9. Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Yizhao Chen

  10. V.N. Sukachev Institute of Forest SB RAS, Akademgorodok, Krasnoyarsk, Russia

    Nadezhda M. Tchebakova & Elena I. Parfenova

  11. Centre for Scientific Research, Université Grenoble Alpes, Saint Martin d’Heres Cedex, France

    Olga G. Zolina

  12. Université Grenoble Alpes, Saint-Martin-d’Hères, Cedex, France

    Ambroise Dufour

  13. Department of Biology, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD, USA

    Ranjeet John

  14. School of Planning, Design, and Construction, Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Peilei Fan

Authors
  1. Pavel Ya. Groisman
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  2. Olga N. Bulygina
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  3. Geoffrey M. Henebry
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  4. Nina A. Speranskaya
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  5. Alexander I. Shiklomanov
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  6. Yizhao Chen
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  7. Nadezhda M. Tchebakova
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  8. Elena I. Parfenova
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  9. Natalia D. Tilinina
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  10. Olga G. Zolina
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  12. Jiquan Chen
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  13. Ranjeet John
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  14. Peilei Fan
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Correspondence to Pavel Ya. Groisman .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Land-Cover/Land-Use Change Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, USA

    Garik Gutman

  2. Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Jiquan Chen

  3. Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Geoffrey M. Henebry

  4. Cartography, GIS & Remote Sensing Department, Institute of Geography, Georg-August University, Goettingen, Germany

    Martin Kappas

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Groisman, P.Y. et al. (2020). Dry Land Belt of Northern Eurasia: Contemporary Environmental Changes. In: Gutman, G., Chen, J., Henebry, G., Kappas, M. (eds) Landscape Dynamics of Drylands across Greater Central Asia: People, Societies and Ecosystems. Landscape Series, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30742-4_2

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