Experience in Ecological and Economic Assessment of Land Degradation in Regions of the Russian Federation

The article presents the results of testing a comprehensive scheme of ecological and economic assessment of land degradation in various regions of the European part of the Russian Federation—Volgograd, Belgorod, Kaliningrad, and Penza oblasts. This scheme includes the use of several methodological approaches—calculation of the amount of damage/harm, which allows one to assess degradation at the present time; determination of land-degradation neutrality (LDN), reflecting the development of degradation processes in dynamics; and assessment of the ratio of the cost of “inaction” to the cost of “action” in relation to the restoration of degraded lands (the methodology of Joachim von Braun), demonstrating the prospects of current land use and predicting the profitability of projects for the restoration of the territory. The originality of the scheme is determined by the possibility of simultaneous detailed analysis of degradation processes in soils and lands in retrospect and at the present time, as well as forecasting them in the future. The results were obtained using the application of the methodology of von Braun. On the one hand, they are based to a certain extent on the methodology of calculating damage from soil and land degradation (here, the cost of restoration or damage is used in the calculations), on the other hand, they come into some contradiction with the results of calculating the LDN for the studied regions. Thus, for the Volgograd oblast with the lowest for the regions value of the neutral balance indicator of land degradation (indicator values of the state of land degradation decay the most), provides a favorable forecast for the success of the implementation of reclamation measures.