Environmental Science, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Geography, Planning and Development
11
Scopus Publications
Scopus Publications
Land abandonment as an indicator of Ukrainian agricultural resilience during Russia's war against Ukraine Sarah Hartman, Rachel Whiteside, Anatoliy Smaliychuk, Iryna Dronova Applied Geography, 2025 Amidst the war, the resilience of Ukraine's export agriculture sector – among the top 10 worldwide and critical for food security – remains a global concern. Here we investigate agricultural resilience in eastern and southern Ukraine by testing the linkage of war and weather on satellite-assessed agricultural abandonment since 2011. We find that less than 0.05 % of the area has been fully abandoned since the war's start in 2014, with another 0.7 % since 2016, and 5 % in early abandonment since 2022. Meanwhile, 0.3 % of the area was fully abandoned then recultivated. Russian occupation is most strongly and positively associated with total abandonment followed by annual precipitation and annual agricultural extent since 2018. In 2023, uncultivated fields were ∼3 times more common in regions previously supplied by the Kakhovka Reservoir than outside those. This study demonstrates how integrating satellite imagery and open data can deepen our understanding of agricultural resilience and inform post-conflict recovery. • Integrating varied data deepens our understanding of agricultural resilience. • High levels of early-stage abandonment along the frontline and in conflict regions. • The presence of occupation, more than its timing or intensity of conflict, explains abandonment. • Region once irrigated by destroyed dam has 3x more unfarmed land than outside. • Enduring abandonment in regions impacted by the start of the war (i.e. 2014).
The environment as the first victim: The impacts of the war on the preservation areas in Ukraine Walter Leal Filho, Mariia Fedoruk, João Henrique Paulino Pires Eustachio, Anastasiia Splodytel, Anatoliy Smaliychuk, Małgorzata Iwona Szynkowska-Jóźwik Journal of Environmental Management, 2024 The war in Ukraine has had a devastating impact on the environment. Military actions have caused the release of hazardous substances into the environment, such as pollutants and toxic chemicals, that have contaminated the water, soil, and air, posing a threat to both human health and the environment. This has resulted in widespread destruction and contamination of natural habitats and resources and has disrupted wildlife populations and ecosystems. The impacts of military activity on the soils of protected areas are particularly critical, as they are the basis of biotic and landscape diversity and require special management and scientifically based monitoring measures even in peaceful conditions. In this context, this communication paper aims to provide an overview of the impacts of the war on the soils in four Ukrainian protected areas, namely Chornobyl Radiation and Ecological Biosphere Reserve; Desniansko-Starohutskyi National Nature Park; Holosiivskyi National Nature Park, and Hetmanskyi National Nature Park. To address these aspects, this paper combined GIS analysis and secondary data including soil samples obtained during field expeditions, to provide evidence of how ground battles, occupation, terrestrial land mines, and explosions can severely impact the soils. Practical and theoretical implications of the military actions are also discussed. • The research combined GIS analysis and secondary data including soil samples to provide evidence of war impacts in Ukraine. • This study discovered and discribed military actions that endangered environment of four protected areas in Ukraine. • On-site assessment of territories provided evidence of the destruction of soil horizons and alteration of their properties. • The soil sample analyses found that the protected areas are contaminated with hazard elements (I-III classes). • This study explored the interconnections of war and environmental degradation, and suggested mitigation measures.
Understanding people's interactions with urban greenspace: Case studies in Eastern Europe Marine Elbakidze, Lucas Dawson, LE Kraft van Ermel, Grzegorz Mikusiński, Marcus Hedblom, Nataliia Korohoda, Ivan Kruhlov, Anatoliy Smaliychuk, Tamari Kurdadze, Ketevan Ugrekhelidze, Yfke Ongena, Hovik Sayadyan, Merujan Galstyan, Olha Grodzinska Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, 2023 This study explored and compared people’s interactions with urban greenspace (UGS) using case studies in three Eastern European countries – Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine. These countries have experienced radical changes in governance systems and socio-economic structures, characteristic of a transition from planned to market economies. Recently, Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine have been arenas for armed conflicts, which have dramatically heightened instability throughout the region. Urban planners in Eastern Europe therefore urgently need context-relevant knowledge to facilitate the critical work of (re-)building more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities. An unrestricted, self-selected online survey was used to collect data in 2021–2022. A total of 3573 respondents completed the survey (N = 1142 in Armenia, N = 1069 in Georgia and N = 1362 in Ukraine). We identified 12 key explanatory factors linked to the frequency of people’s interactions with UGS using multiple ordinal logistic regressions. The core findings are: (i) most factors are country-specific; (ii) age of respondents had a large effect on the frequency of UGS use in Armenia and Georgia, where older people were mostly infrequent users of UGS; (iii) those who lived further from UGS or could not access it on foot were less likely to use it often; and (iv) the only common key factor across three countries was that people who ‘do not want’ to use UGS are infrequent users. The study shows that only 10–18% of respondents were satisfied with the UGS availability and quality. Among many constraints related to UGS use, litter in UGS and lack of time were the most mentioned. Large parks were the most preferred types of UGS. Our findings confirm the need for urban planners in Eastern Europe to consider and integrate diverse factors influencing people’s willingness to interact with urban nature. A priority is to understand how to bring infrequent users to UGS, particularly older people in various cultural settings in Eastern European countries.
Climate change adaptation policy and practice: Case study of the major cities in Poland Anatoliy Smaliychuk, Agnieszka Latocha-Wites Cities, 2023 The paper critically evaluates the urban climate change adaptation policy and practise in Central Europe using Polish cities as an example. The study focused on local policy documents and a scoring system was elaborated and applied for their analysis with particular attention to ‘green’ adaptation concepts. The link between the time of adoption and the scores received by cities' Strategies and Programmes for Environmental Protection demonstrates innovation flow from science into urban policy. We revealed that many of the proposed measures in Urban Adaptation Plans represent rather mitigation than adaptation implying substantial knowledge gaps in differentiating between them. A portfolio of projects implemented in 2014–2020 within EU funding programmes and Participatory budget was compiled with further classification into ‘green’, ‘grey’, or ‘soft’. More than 80 % of the selected projects in each of the cities were classified as ‘green’, but only one studied city demonstrated an upward trend in the number and cumulative budget of the adaptation projects. The examined Polish cities, similarly to other Central and Eastern European ones, experiencing fast economic growth have featured a profound contraction of green areas over the last decades. Partially it might be compensated by local environmental programmes that promote application of nature-based solutions.
Unlocking archival censuses for spatial analysis: An historical dataset of the administrative units of Galicia 1857–1910 Krzysztof Ostafin, Mateusz Troll, Krzysztof Ślusarek, Anatoliy Smaliychuk, Anna Miklar, Krzysztof Gwosdz, Natalia Kolecka, Dominik Kaim Historical Methods, 2023 The lack of long-term assessment of the administrative divisions of Galicia, a former part of the Austrian monarchy, has so far been a serious obstacle in the mapping and spatial analyses of archival census data. To fill this gap, we reconstructed the boundaries of 5944 cadastral communes, court districts, and political districts into circles (https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/PXDP41). Geometric boundaries are accompanied by different names according to census and cartographic sources. We found that a detailed reconstruction of the administrative units for Galicia is critically important for appropriately using census data in spatial analyses. So far, it has been neglected or considered difficult to perform because of the large area of the region, frequent administrative changes, and time-consuming map processing.
Potential for renewable use of biomass from reedbeds on the lower Prut, Danube and Dniester floodplains of Ukraine and Moldova , P. Goriup, A. Haberl, , O. Rubel, , V. Ajder, , I. Kulchytskyy, , A. Smaliychuk, , N. Goriup, and Mires and Peat, 2019 The first phase of the ReedBASE project commenced in September 2016 and ended in March 2018. It assessed the use of reed biomass as a source of sustainable energy and raw material for other products in parts of the floodplains of the Prut, Danube and Dniester Rivers in Ukraine and Moldova. It was estimated that the project study areas alone could sustainably generate some 100,000 tons of reed biomass per year. In energy terms, this is equivalent to almost 50,000 tons of coal or 39.5 million cubic metres of gas. Using reed biomass would not only provide a substantial amount of energy, but also avoid emitting some 79,000 tons of CO2 from burning fossil fuels. Moreover, conservative estimates indicate that the organic soils in the project area contain around 850,000 tons of carbon, and this amount will increase as the organic matter accumulates over time. ReedBASE also established a cluster of interested organisations in order to enhance their collaboration.
