Recultivation of abandoned agricultural lands in Ukraine: Patterns and drivers

•Recultivation of formerly abandoned cropland became a major land-use trend in Ukraine after 2007.•Up to 1 million ha of abandoned land were recultivated.•Main hotspots of recultivation occurred in the Steppe zone.•Recultivation patterns were primarily driven by factors related to land productivity....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Global environmental change 2016-05, Vol.38, p.70-81
Main Authors: Smaliychuk, Anatoliy, Müller, Daniel, Prishchepov, Alexander V., Levers, Christian, Kruhlov, Ivan, Kuemmerle, Tobias
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abandonment
Agricultural commodities
Agricultural economics
Agricultural expansion
Agriculture
Boosted regression trees
Commodity prices
Cultivars
Farming
Farmlands
Farms
Former Soviet Union
Land
Land-use change
MODIS
Post-Soviet agricultural abandonment
Pricing
Spatial statistics
Ukraine
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Summary:•Recultivation of formerly abandoned cropland became a major land-use trend in Ukraine after 2007.•Up to 1 million ha of abandoned land were recultivated.•Main hotspots of recultivation occurred in the Steppe zone.•Recultivation patterns were primarily driven by factors related to land productivity. The recent rise in agricultural commodity prices and the expectation that high price will persist have triggered a wave of farmland expansion in regions where land resources are still available. One such region is the former Soviet Union, where the collapse of socialism caused massive agricultural abandonment and where some of these lands are now being brought back into production. Yet, the extent and spatial patterns of recultivation, and what determines these patterns, remains unclear. We examined the extent of recultivation of abandoned agricultural land in Ukraine since 2007 using a new, satellite-based recultivation map and assessed the effect of biophysical and socioeconomic determinants on recultivation patterns using boosted regression trees. We found key predictors of recultivation to be related to the suitability of land for agriculture (i.e., soil quality, temperature). Accessibility to major cities was also important, with most recultivation happening closer to settlements, but this influence varied across Ukraine. Variables related to agricultural management (fertilizer input, mechanization) and demography were negligible in explaining recultivation in our analyses. These factors suggest that recultivation patterns were primarily driven by factors related to land productivity, with recultivation focusing on the most promising areas. Given the remaining large amount of unused agricultural land in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and considering that much abandonment occurred in areas only marginally suited to agriculture, our findings provide important insights into where recultivation can be expected to happen and thus for assessing the potential socioeconomic and environmental impacts of recultivation.
ISSN:0959-3780
1872-9495
DOI:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.02.009