干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Desertification is a global ecological problem connected with a set of undesirable and devastating processes and the consequences resulting from them. Desertification is related to degradation processes and loss of ecosystem services, caused by human activities and climate changes in the arid and semi-arid territories. Degradation processes lead to modifications in horizontal and vertical landscape structure and accordingly to changes of the ecosystem services, delivered by landscapes. The study area is located in south-eastern part of Bulgaria, where, in the last years, intensification of degradation processes in landscapes, induced by drought is occurred. There is a real threat from intensification of desertification processes in these landscapes in the next decades. The case study aims to determine a predicted status of the ecosystem services, delivered by landscapes. As a starting point, two landscape maps valid to different time moments (2000, 2018) and an assessment of delivered by the landscapes ecosystem services are used. The landscape maps are created by application of supervised classification on Landsat TM and Sentinel 2 images. For differentiation of the changes and determination of a predicted status, Discriminant Function Change Detection is used. The results show the increase and respectively decrease of the area of different land cover classes within the territory and testify for the temp of the change in the horizontal landscape structure. The determination of a predicted status enables differentiation of potential risk territories, which to be prioritized in the ecological management.