2.3 Landuse/landcover change assessment
We used several regional studies for the quantitative assessment of
changes in landuse and landcover. Thus, cropland and forest areas for
1987-2015 were calculated based on Buchner et al. (2020). While glacier
areas for 1960-2014 were derived from Tielidze and Wheate’s (2018)
study. For several rivers (e.g., Ardon, Argun, Genaldon, and Sunzha),
glacier areas were calculated manually from the GLIMS database (Raupet al. , 2007) since there was no requested information about them
in Tielidze and Wheate paper. To estimate landuse and landcover change,
we applied the same technique as above (Eq. (1-3)).