Short Review of Climate and Land Use change Impact on Land Degradation in Tashkent Province.

Abstract

The paper is a short review about scientific articles, local reports and expert’s opinion on land degradation caused by climate change (in particular temperature and precipitation change) and land use change in Central Asia (CA) with a special interest in Tashkent Province and aspects of regional water management in CA in order to clarify future study activities. Furthermore the paper presents the preliminary analysis of climate and land use changes in Tashkent Province and the author’s opinion about the impact of these changes to potential land degradation. Climate change analysis based on the 0.5° resolution National Centers of Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Global Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) weather dataset of the 35 years period from 1979 to 2013 demonstrated the trend of increasing temperature and variable trend of precipitation, but small overall precipitation decrease in the croplands, pasturelands and grasslands of study area. Irrigated agricultural cropland increased to 7.800 ha from 1999 to 2010 in order meet population demand and increase national economy. Therefore, it is very importance to carry out comprehensive study of climate and land use change impacts on land degradation at regional scale using high resolution spatio-temporal remotely sensed data for better assessment of land degradation.