Том 87, № 7 (2023)

The results of the first stage of research on adaptation measures taken by the rural population of mountain regions and the administration of Dagestan in response to climate change are presented. Assessment of climate change over the past 20 years in the Eastern Caucasus with special attention to the mountain territories of Dagestan was carried out based on satellite measurements and reanalysis data. It has been revealed that in the last decade in the middle and high mountains, annual and seasonal temperatures have increased markedly, and the amount of annual and summer precipitation begins to decrease. In general, the mountains of the Eastern Caucasus and Dagestan in particular are becoming warmer and drier. The actions of the population of mountain areas in the field of crop production in response to warming and a growing lack of moisture are mainly aimed, as in many mountainous rural regions of the world, at changing varieties and crops, growing intensive orchards that are more resistant to climate change, expanding the areas of fruit crops in high altitude zone. The unpredictability of weather phenomena caused the active growth of the greenhouse industry. New processes have activated related industries and breeding science in Dagestan. The initiatives of the population are supported by the Program for the Socioeconomic Development of the Mountain Territories of the Republic of Dagestan for 2020–2025, which provides for subsidies and grants, primarily for personal subsidiary plots. The program does not aim to adapt to climate change, but these activities objectively act as support for the population adaptation actions. The agricultural terraces of Dagestan are considered as a potential resource for the agriculture development in the face of climate change, as well as possible tourism objects, which are elements of the historical and cultural heritage and identity of local landscapes.

The article considers the transformation of the settlement structure of the Dagestan mountainous territories and changes in the daily use of the mountain villages’ space as an interconnected process using the evolutionary-functional principle and the principle of multi-scale. To achieve the study objectives, a typology of the mountainous and foothill territories of Dagestan was carried out based on the analysis of the population of settlements, their high-altitude and center-peripheral position. Further, in accordance with the typology carried out, key villages were selected to study the directions of transformation of the villages’ space functional use by their residents. In addition to statistical data, the study is based on the materials of three expeditions to the Republic of Dagestan in 2020–2022. The authors surveyed 10 districts and more than 30 rural settlements. The methodology of the mountain villages’ survey is based on the method of field observations, expert and narrative interviews. In addition, as the key most typical mountain villages, the features of the use of public spaces by residents of the five settlements of Fiy, Tsumada, Echeda, Tlokh, Gubden are considered in detail (data on other surveyed settlements were used to identify common patterns in the space use). As a study result, it was revealed that the dynamics, internal differentiation and the nature of the use by residents of mountain villages’ public territories is determined by the settlements’ geographical location, the preservation of agrarian functions, the religious factor and to a lesser extent the ethno-cultural differences of local communities, which are more pronounced in mountainous Dagestan compared to other regions of the North Caucasus. The assumption was confirmed that the transformations taking place in the functional use of the village at the local level are the result of socio-cultural changes taking place at the regional and country levels.

Ideas about green economy and green development are closely linked to the sustainable development paradigm. In the 1970s, the Club of Rome for the first time formulated the main provisions of the model of sustainable development, which implies ensuring high environmental quality and maintaining sufficient natural resource potential for the long term. Various aspects of green and sustainable development acquire their meaningful expression only at the regional level. It is within a certain territory that least generalized assessments of natural resource potential and both the anthropogenic impact on nature components and their spatially differentiated consequences, assessment of the permissible change level and conservation of vegetation cover and biodiversity in general are possible. It is proposed to consider the green development at the regional level as one of the stages of the sustainable development. Sikhote-Alin is a unique mountain territory, where there are natural resource, economic, social and ecological-geographical conditions for forming and ensuring green economy and green development. At the same time, the green development of the Sikhote-Alin is considered as such a socio-economic development of the mountainous territory, where technogenic, anthropogenic impacts on the environment are minimized and high biodiversity of landscapes is preserved. Within the mountain system of Sikhote-Alin, in general, it is proposed to allocate three green development territories, Northern, Central and Southern, based on the similarity of natural resource structures and economic activities. These territories should have a special status to stimulate environmentally friendly economic activities, with the introduction of environmental restrictions and the achievement of rational nature management in general. The organization of monitoring of the green development territories is proposed.

The South Siberian and North Mongolian Mountains have enormous forests potential; however, more and more territories of forests disturbed by cutting and fire appeared during the late twenty years. One more negative phenomenon has been observed in unique dark-needle forests across the South Siberian Mountains: massive dieback of dark-needled forests that was related to climate aridization by many researchers. Our goal was to study predicted climate change impacts on the montane vegetation (altitudinal vegetation belts, AVB) transformation in a changing climate across the South Siberian and North Mongolian Mountains (window 48°–58° N and 80°–120° E). We based on outputs of the general circulation model the of the Computing Mathematics Institute, RAS (INM-CM5-0) and recent climate change scenarios (IPCC 2022) at 2050: the moderate ssp126 and extreme ssp585. Predictions of climate anomalies at 2050 were July temperatures 2–5°С, January temperature 1–4°С and annual precipitation 50–125 mm. According to this climate change, potential AVB may undergo transformation as follows: tundra, subalpine and “podgolets” open forest (under bare uplands) would significantly shrink; montane taiga would shrink 1.7-fold from the moderate scenario and 2.3-fold from the extreme scenario. Dark-needled AVB would remain on the same areas at the expense of subalpine AVB. Potential forest space including forest-tundra and forest-steppe ecotones would change insignificantly: would not change under the moderate scenario and would 10% decrease under the extreme scenario. Forest-steppe AVB would twice increase at the expense of light-needled AVB. One third of forest-steppe would favor broad-leaved forest-steppe. Steppe and semidesert would extend.

The sediment runoff of mountain rivers is an important characteristic that reflects the intensity of denudation in various altitudinal zones, as well as the spatial and temporal features of its changes. The Caucasus region, which includes the Greater and Lesser Caucasus, is characterized by significant territorial contrast associated with differences in the geological and geomorphological structure, seismo-tectonic activity, climate, which together determine the lifestyle of the local population and the features of anthropogenic impact on landscapes. The paper presents the results of estimates of the contemporary rates of denudation of the region, obtained on the basis of processing a database on the flow of suspended sediments of rivers at 194 gauge stations with a duration of observations of more than 10 years. To identify the influence of the main natural and anthropogenic factors on the sediment runoff of rivers, calculated and published data on spatially distributed indicators characterizing individual factors or their combinations were used. Statistical processing of dependencies between individual indicators and sediment runoff of rivers was carried out. It has been established that the mean suspended sediment yield (SSY) for the region is 446 t km^–2 yr^–1. It reaches its maximum values (SSY > 1500 t km^–2 year^–1) in the Eastern Caucasus, where it has remained high in recent decades and continues to grow in a number of river basins. For other parts of the Greater Caucasus, a trend of decreasing sediment runoff was revealed, due to a decrease in the glacial supply of rivers and, more locally, a decrease in the area of arable land in the mountains.

On the example of complex analysis of rangeland systems of Kyrgyzstan located in different natural conditions (key objects “Balykchi (Kyok-Moynok),” “Kyok-Oy,” “Suu-Samir”) the possibility of applying the methodology of sustainable land management modeling for assessment and improvement of traditional mountain pastures is shown. The main parameters of sustainable pasture management models for the considered territories were defined including 3 main groups: land potential, adverse impacts (actual processes and phenomena), risk of degradation (potential processes), whose content is divided into 8 subgroups and includes natural conditions and expanded resource potential, ability to self-recovery and sufficiency of socioeconomic conditions, natural and anthropogenic impacts and risks defined for these groups. A systematic list of successful practices in the use of mountain rangelands in Kyrgyzstan has been compiled. The analysis of different practices and their role in maintaining the sustainability of specific models, depending on the baseline situation, biophysical and socioeconomic conditions, has been conducted. The results are summarized and presented in the petal diagrams’ form. It is shown that the effectiveness of sustainable rangeland management models is determined by a set of successful practices. The article reveals a natural growth of volume and diversity of applied practices as the growth of anthropogenic potential of rangeland systems. The proposed approaches can be used as part of the practical management of rangelands by pastoralist societies and are included as methodological recommendations for the development of rangeland legislation and the assessment of the effectiveness of rangeland livestock, taking into account the completeness of the set of practices and technologies applied in different natural conditions.