ИСТИНА

Agriculture is the major driver of land use/land cover change in Russia where more than 220 million ha (13 % of the total country territory) are designated for agricultural use. Agricultural intensification creates new threats to biodiversity, that includes plowing mostly of all tillable lands, increasing of soil erosion, overgrazing and pasture degradation, landscape fragmentation by the fields and infrastructure.Between the natural factors that shape the agriculture in Russia, climate is the most important one. The five different Global Circulation Models (GCMs) were used for three pre-set time periods: 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s.