German Kust

and 3 more

The paper overviews and summarizes the results of the developing a methodology for the land degradation neutrality (LDN) assessment basing on LDN-based studies at national, regional and local levels in Russia. The review of more one hundred available publications in Russian language over the past 6-7 years allowed for analysis on the following areas: development of LDN terminology, LDN assessment at the different levels, adapting transition matrix; application of global and national LDN indicators; using the LDN concept for economic valuation of land, estimating LDN baseline, and using LDN as an integral indicator for sustainable land management. With the LDN concept the issue of land degradation (LD) has gone beyond the limited scope of desertification and drylands, and enlarged the concept of “rational” or “effective” land use and land management dominated in Russia. The LDN concept has been broadened with the introduction of the LDN Index proposed to evaluate the rate of LDN achievement; proposal on reconstructing transition matrices and adding specific land cover sub-categories; approach of integrating traditional national sectoral systems for assessing land quality with an LDN add-on; justification for using additional and specific LDN indicators at national and subnational level (soil erosion, aridity, soil salinity, soil depletion, etc.); importance of factoring natural background trends like climate change, natural succession cycles linked with geological and geomorphological processes; need for using different site-specific LDN baselines, not only those time-based; approaches for LDN-based economic valuation of lands; and the LDN-based typology of SLM practices and models.