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Declining Human Pressure and Opportunities for Rewilding in the Steppes of Eurasia

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Declining Human Pressure and Opportunities for Rewilding in the Steppes of Eurasia A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Baumann, Matthias et al. Article — Published Version Declining human pressure and opportunities for rewilding in the steppes of Eurasia Diversity and Distributions Provided in Cooperation with: Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Halle (Saale) Suggested Citation: Baumann, Matthias et al. (2020) : Declining human pressure and opportunities for rewilding in the steppes of Eurasia, Diversity and Distributions, ISSN 1472-4642, Wiley, Oxford [u.a.], Vol. 26, Iss. 9, pp. 1058-1070, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13110 , https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ddi.13110 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/222932 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.econstor.eu Received: 9 August 2019 | Revised: 19 May 2020 | Accepted: 26 May 2020 DOI: 10.1111/ddi.13110 BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH Declining human pressure and opportunities for rewilding in the steppes of Eurasia Matthias Baumann1 | Johannes Kamp2 | Florian Pötzschner1 | Benjamin Bleyhl1,3 | Andrey Dara1,4 | Brett Hankerson1,4 | Alexander V. Prishchepov5,6 | Florian Schierhorn4 | Daniel Müller1,3,4 | Norbert Hölzel2 | Roland Krämer1,7,8 | Ruslan Urazaliyev2,9 | Tobias Kuemmerle1,3 1Geography Department, Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany Abstract 2Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Aim: Large and ecologically functioning steppe complexes have been lost historically Group, Institute of Landscape Ecology, across the globe, but recent land-use changes may allow the reversal of this trend in University of Münster, Münster, Germany 3Integrative Research Institute on some regions. We aimed to develop and map indicators of changing human influence Transformations of Human-Environment using satellite imagery and historical maps, and to use these indicators to identify Systems (IRI THESys), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany areas for broad-scale steppe rewilding. 4Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Location: Eurasian steppes of Kazakhstan. Development in Transition Economies Methods: We mapped decreasing human influence indicated by cropland abandon- (IAMO), Halle (Saale), Germany ment, declining grazing pressure and rural outmigration in the steppes of northern 5Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Kazakhstan. We did this by processing ~5,500 Landsat scenes to map changes in Copenhagen, København K, Denmark cropland between 1990 and 2015, and by digitizing Soviet topographic maps and 6Institute of Steppe of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Science (RAS), examining recent high-resolution satellite imagery to assess the degree of abandon- Orenburg, Russia ment of >2,000 settlements and >1,300 livestock stations. We combined this infor- 7 Department of Ecosystem Services, mation into a human influence index (HI), mapped changes in HI to highlight where Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Leipzig, Germany rewilding might take place and assessed how this affected the connectivity of steppe 8German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity habitat. Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany Results: Across our study area, about 6.2 million ha of cropland were abandoned 9Association for the Conservation of (30.5%), 14% of all settlements were fully and 81% partly abandoned, and 76% of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK), Nur- livestock stations were completely dismantled between 1990 and 2015, suggesting Sultan, Kazakhstan substantially decreasing human pressure across vast areas. This resulted in increased Correspondence connectivity of steppe habitat. Matthias Baumann, Conservation Biogeography Lab, Geography Department, Main conclusions: The steppes of Eurasia are experiencing massively declining Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den human influence, suggesting large-scale passive rewilding is taking place. Many of Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany. Email: [email protected] these areas are now important for the connectivity of the wider steppe landscape and can provide habitat for endangered megafauna such as the critically endangered Funding information Volkswagen Foundation, Grant/Award saiga antelope. Yet, this window of opportunity may soon close, as recultivation of Number: A112025; German Research abandoned cropland is gaining momentum. Our aggregate human influence index Foundation; Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2020 The Authors. Diversity and Distributions published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1058 | wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ddi Diversity and Distributions. 2020;26:1058–1070. BAUMANN ET AL. | 1059 captures key components of rewilding and can help to devise strategies for fostering large, connected networks of protected areas in the steppe. KEYWORDS agricultural abandonment, ecological integrity, human pressure, Landsat, landscape connectivity, passive rewilding, steppe restoration 1 | INTRODUCTION Folke, & Lindborg, 2014; Sieber et al., 2013). Given the current scar- city of natural grasslands in many regions, and the potential multiple Temperate grasslands are among the Earth's most expansive biomes. benefits of restoring them, identifying places where steppe rewild- Rich in biodiversity, they also provide important ecosystem services ing could take place is a conservation priority. such as carbon storage (Dixon, Faber-Langendoen, Josse, Morrison, Both locating candidate areas for grassland rewilding and mea- & Loucks, 2014). Many temperate grasslands are located on the most suring rewilding progress remain challenging. In part, this is because productive soils of the world and have therefore been widely con- rewilding research has often focused on forests (Jepson, 2016), and verted to cropland and—where less productive—to pastures (Wright adequate tools and datasets for steppe regions are often missing. & Wimberly, 2013). As a result, the extent of natural grasslands in the Furthermore, while the restoration potential of temperate grass- temperate zone has declined strongly. In North America, only small lands has repeatedly been assessed, existing work has typically and isolated natural prairie patches remain amid a matrix of cropland focused on small regions or individual sites within agricultural land- (Zilverberg et al., 2018). In Europe, not a single large complex of nat- scapes (Fuhlendorf et al., 2018). We are not aware of any assessment ural grasslands (i.e. grasslands that are subject to little or no deliber- for rewilding opportunities at the broad scales needed to establish ate direct modification by humans (Gibson, 2009)) remains that still connected and self-regulating grassland complexes. Recently, con- exhibits interactions between large herbivores, fire and vegetation siderable progress has been made in framing what such assessments (Wesche et al., 2016). As a result, many grassland species have been could look like. Specifically, two fundamental dimensions need to declining and are now of conservation concern. Identifying grass- be considered when identifying rewilding opportunities and prog- lands of high nature conservation value and restoring natural grass- ress: changes in human influence and changes in ecological integrity lands across larger areas is therefore important (Fuhlendorf, Davis, (Torres et al., 2018), where the latter can be framed to collectively Elmore, Goodman, & Hamilton, 2018). capture changes in disturbance regimes, connectivity and trophic Recent socioeconomic trends may provide opportunities for complexity (Perino et al., 2019). To our knowledge, no study has yet achieving this goal. Following structural changes and intensification applied this framework to any grassland region of the world. in agriculture, marginal lands are being abandoned in many grass- Identifying and mapping indicators capturing different aspects land regions globally (Estel et al., 2015; Mottet, Ladet, Coque, & of rewilding can reveal priorities for conservation planning. For Gibon, 2006). This, in turn, may allow the restoration of the ecologi- instance, protected areas in many grassland regions are typically cal integrity of grasslands, particularly with regard to
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