Impacts of Land Cover & Land Use Change on Indigenous Communities in Siberian Taiga

Over the last several decades, Siberian taiga has been subject to intensive logging and natural resource exploitation promoting the proliferation of informal roads. Informal roads are largely undocumented and include trails to unsurfaced service roads, and other industrial easements not maintained by any official entities. While transportation network development can improve the connectivity of local indigenous communities with urban centers and other settlements, they can also interfere with indigenous subsistence routes and hunting grounds. This thesis presentation summarizes quantified land cover and land use change within two study areas in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. Significant drivers of change are identified through a wholistic treatment of remote sensing, spatial statistical, interview, and socioeconomic analyses. Results of this thesis may be of particular importance to inform local sustainability and equitable policies that consider the interplay of climate change, socio-economic development, and preservation of indigenous cultures in the subarctic Russia.

Author

• Morozova, Arina O

Language

• en

Keyword

• Infrastructural Development
• Informal Roads
• Sustainability
• Indigenous communities
• LCLUC

Date created

• 2022

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Geography

Degree

• M.S.

Advisor

• Kuklina, Vera V
• Nyland, Kelsey E

Committee Member(s)

• Shiklomanov, Nikolay I
• Kuklina, Vera V
• Nyland, Kelsey E

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/x920fx84m