Effects of land use and vegetation changes on soil erosion of alpine grazing lands - Fergana Range, Southern Kyrgyzstan Kumulative Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Naturwissenschaften an der Fakultät für Mathematik, Informatik und Naturwissenschaften Fachbereich Geowissenschaften der Universität Hamburg vorgelegt von Maksim Kulikov aus Zarafshon, Usbekistan Hamburg, 2018 Als Dissertation angenommen am Fachbereich Geowissenschaften Tag des Vollzugs der Promotion: 30.10.2018 Gutachter/Gutachterinnen: Prof. Dr. Udo Schickhoff Dr. Alexander Gröngröft Vorsitzender des Fachpromotionsausschusses Prof. Dr. Dirk Gajewski Geowissenschaften: Dekan der Fakultät MIN: Prof. Dr. Heinrich Graener "Hiermit versichere ich an Eides statt, dass ich die vorliegende Dissertation mit dem Titel: „Effects of land use and vegetation changes on soil erosion of alpine grazing lands - Fergana Range, Southern Kyrgyzstan“ selbstständig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Hilfsmittel – insbesondere keine im Quellenverzeichnis nicht benannten Internet-Quellen – benutzt habe. Alle Stellen, die wörtlich oder sinngemäß aus Veröffentlichungen entnommen wurden, sind als solche kenntlich gemacht. Ich versichere weiterhin, dass ich die Dissertation oder Teile davon vorher weder im In- noch im Ausland in einem anderen Prüfungsverfahren eingereicht habe und die eingereichte schriftliche Fassung der auf dem elektronischen Speichermedium entspricht.“ Hamburg, August 2018 Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my supervisors Prof. Dr. Udo Schickhoff and Dr. Alexander Gröngröft, for their guidance and assistance through all these years of seemingly everlasting Ph.D. project. Their expertise, advices and motivation kept me working in the right direction. I am also very grateful to Dr. Elke Fischer, Dr. Olaf Conrad, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Böhner, Dr. Stefan Kern and Dr. Georgy Lazkov for their constant and tireless support, advices and expertise in the field, in the laboratory and with GIS, this entire endeavor would not be possible without them. I am also very appreciated to Niels Schwab, Peter Borchardt and Bolot Tagaev, the friends who granted me so much of their time and invaluable advices that their input into this work and my wellbeing cannot be overestimated. The big thanks and hugs go to my numerous office and mountain friends: Li, Jelena, Alina, Birgit, Anna, Julia, Janne, Sabrina, Lena, Eli, Franzi, Maria, Benni, Martin, Björn, Jan, Lars, Alex and many others for their small talks and large chats, offers here and there, their company at lunches and in bars, and for just being such wonderful people. Volkswagen Foundation, Hannover, Germany and Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, Bonn, Germany are greatly appreciated for their financial support. Thank you very much to the entire SAGA team, Q GIS team, R team, Python team, NASA, USGS, SRTM, ASTER, DWD and ICDC, these wonderful software and data was the key stone of this work. I am very thankful to my parents, my brother, my wife and friends for their patience, constant support and not yawning at times, when I was carried away by talking what my work actually is and when it would be finished. List of figures Contents List of figures ....................................................................................................................... 2 List of tables ......................................................................................................................... 3 List of acronyms .................................................................................................................. 4 Zusammenfassung ................................................................................................................ 5 Abstract ................................................................................................................................ 8 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 10 2. Study area ................................................................................................................... 13 2.1 Climate ..................................................................................................................... 13 2.2 Vegetation ................................................................................................................ 19 2.3 Soils .......................................................................................................................... 26 2.4 Human impact .......................................................................................................... 29 3. Soil erosion modelling ................................................................................................ 33 3.1 USLE and its derivatives .......................................................................................... 33 3.2 GIS and soil loss modelling ..................................................................................... 37 3.3 Digital soil mapping ................................................................................................. 40 3.4 Soil sampling design and validation ......................................................................... 43 4. Modelling of climate and vegetation interactions ...................................................... 46 4.1 Review of climate and vegetation studies ................................................................ 49 4.2 Vegetation mapping and sampling design ............................................................... 53 5. Overview of original publications .............................................................................. 56 5.1 Article I .................................................................................................................... 56 5.2 Article II ................................................................................................................... 57 5.3 Article III .................................................................................................................. 58 5.4 Article IV .................................................................................................................. 59 6. Results ........................................................................................................................ 61 7. Conclusions and outlook ............................................................................................ 65 List of publications ............................................................................................................ 69 Oral presentations .............................................................................................................. 69 References .......................................................................................................................... 70 Attachment: Original publications ..................................................................................... 83 Article I .......................................................................................................................... 83 Article II ......................................................................................................................... 95 Article III ...................................................................................................................... 110 Article IV ...................................................................................................................... 130 1 List of figures List of figures Figure 1. Study area. .......................................................................................................... 14 Figure 2. Climatic zones (for details see Table 1). ............................................................ 16 Figure 3. Geobotanical regions of the first and second order, adopted from Vykhodtsev (1966) and Adyshev et al. (1987). The geobotanical regions of the first order are differentiated by colors, and those of the second order – by boundaries and their respective titles................................................................................................................... 22 Figure 4. Soil provinces and soil districts, adopted from Mamytov (1974) and Adyshev et al. (1987). The soil provinces are differentiated by colors, and soil districts – by boundaries and their respective titles. ................................................................................ 27 Figure 5. Spatial clusters of vegetation-climate interactions. ............................................ 63 2 List of tables List of tables Table 1. Characteristics of climatic zones (Iliasov et al. 2003). ........................................ 17 3 List of acronyms List of acronyms ARIMA - Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average ARMA - Autoregressive Moving Average ASTER - Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer CAIAG - Central-Asian Institute for Applied Geosciences DEM – Digital Elevation Model DWD – Deutscher Wetterdienst EOF - Empirical Orthogonal Function FAO – Food and Agriculture Organization GDEM – Global Digital Elevation Map GDP - Gross Domestic Product GIS – Geographic Information System GPS – Global Positioning System ICDC - Integrated Climate Data Center KRSU – Kyrgyz Russian Slavic University LOESS - LOcally wEighted regreSsion Smoother MODIS - Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer MUSLE – Modified Soil Loss Equation NASA - National Aeronautics and Space