Grassland change analyses

Land cover changes affect the state of ecosystems, biodiversity, and regional climate patterns. Monitoring those changes is essential for understanding the environmental shifts caused by both natural processes and human activities, particularly in regions where agricultural land use and natural habitats intersect. The current project "From Iron Curtain to Green Belt: restoring ecological networks in Southeast Bulgaria" aims to provide a detailed analysis of land cover dynamics within its project area using freely available satellite remote sensing techniques. This study investigates the transformation of four land cover types— grasslands, agricultural lands, woody vegetation and non-vegetated landcover—over three key periods: 2008, 2014, and 2021. By leveraging open-access geospatial tools such as Google Earth Engine (GEE) and QGIS, and freely available data from the Landsat-5 and Landsat-8 satellite missions, this research offers a detailed, high-resolution examination of landscape changes. The integration of Random Forest (RF) machine learning approach ensures both accuracy and scalability in land cover mapping. This study’s findings indicate a drastic decrease of vegetation cover for the period 2006-2014, driven by agriculture expansion with a corresponding decrease in grassland and woodland areas. Between 2014 and 2021, there was a partial recovery of natural vegetation as agricultural activity decreased in some regions, though the impact of earlier deforestation and land conversion remained. This mix of loss and regrowth highlights changes in land use patterns and reflects broader environmental and socio-economic shifts.

Acknowledgments: This study was initiated and financially supported by the project “From Iron Curtain to Green Belt: restoring ecological networks in Southeast Bulgaria”. The project is funded by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme (ELSP) that is managed by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative – a collaboration between the Chancellor Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge of The Old Schools and leading internationally-focused biodiversity conservation organisations. The University and the ELSP are supported by Arcadia – a charitable fund of Peter Baldwin and Lisbet Rausing.