Determinants of agricultural land abandonment in post-soviet European Russia

Alexander Prishchepov (), Volker C. Radeloff, Daniel Müller, Maxim Dubinin and Matthias Baumann

No 1, IAMO Forum 2011: Will the "BRICs Decade" Continue? – Prospects for Trade and Growth from Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe (IAMO)

Abstract: Socio-economic and institutional changes may accelerate land-use and land-cover change. Our goal was to explore the determinants of agricultural land abandonment within one agro-climatic and economic region of post-Soviet European Russia during the first decade of transition from a state-command to market-driven economy (between 1990 and 2000). We integrated maps of abandoned agricultural land derived from 30 m resolution Landsat TM/ETM+ images, environmental and socioeconomic variables and estimated logistic regressions. Results showed that post-Soviet agricultural land abandonment was significantly associated with lower average grain yields in the late 1980s, higher distance from the populated places, areas with low population densities, for isolated agricultural areas within the forest matrix and near the forest edges. Hierarchical partitioning showed that average grain yields in the late 1980s contributed the most in explaining the variability of agricultural land abandonment, followed by location characteristics of the land. While the spatial patterns correspond to the classic micro-economic theories of von Thünen and Ricardo, it was largely the macro-scale driving forces that fostered agricultural abandonment. In the light of continuum depopulation process in the studied region of European Russia, we expect continuing agricultural abandonment after the year 2000.

Keywords: agricultural land abandonment; institutional change; land use change; spatial analysis; logistic regression; remote sensing; Russia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cis and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

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Related works:
Working Paper: DETERMINANTS OF AGRICULTURAL LAND ABANDONMENT IN POSTSOVIET EUROPEAN RUSSIA (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:iamo11:1

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