Habitat Conversion
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Decrease amount of key habitat converted
Data collection in progress
Kakheti Steppes
Georgia
Problem: Within the last decade, large areas of species-rich grasslands within the project landscape have been converted to massive monocultures of almond and olives plantations, fragmenting and reducing the area of this key habitat.
Action: SABUKO participates in public consultations and submits recommendations on various land reclamation projects within the project area. For example, one such project was halted following their intervention. SABUKO conducts on-site visits to areas affected by the expansion of plantation agriculture, documenting issues like the creation of artificial barriers and trenches around almond and olive plantations. These findings have been incorporated into a legislative review, aiming to influence policy changes and reduce unsustainable land conversion practices.
Indicator: SABUKO will monitor land conversion rates, which will allow them to identify the areas that are in greatest need of sustainable resource use and advocacy. Over the project period, Sabuko hopes to reduce land conversion rates as a result of their actions.
Methods
SABUKO is integrating cadastral data with satellite imagery to track land use changes within Kakheti’s target areas, encompassing the Dedoplistskaro, Akhmeta, and Sighnaghi municipalities.
The cadastral data provides a record of registered plots over the years, which can be compared with historical satellite images of the same periods. This comparison aids data quality because it helps identify changes in land use and new plot registrations that do not correspond to physical changes on the ground, suggesting they were previously unregistered, rather than newly converted. Findings are further validated with ground truthing, where possible, to ensure accuracy in distinguishing between newly registered and converted lands. From these methods, final variables include number of land plots registered each year and the total area included within these plots. Additional relevant variables include the type of land (hayfield, pasture, arable, protected area, forest), land use (agricultural or non-agricultural) and land ownership (municipality, private, state-owned, mixed, or another type of legal entity). The map below shows the distribution of these land types in the project area in 2023 (Fig. 1).
Figure 1: Land distribution in the project area by land use type in 2023. Figure has labels in both Georgian and English; provided by Irakli Sokhadze, SABUKO.
To analyse this data, SABUKO will use a multivariate approach, incorporating the primary variables (number and area of plots per year) and the secondary variables (type of land, land use and ownership) into models, to observe how these variables interact. For example, how frequently land owned by private entities is converted from pasture to arable land, compared to land managed by municipalities.
This analysis will help SABUKO to identify the key factors driving land use change, therefore effectively directing their future conservation efforts. Importantly, this will also inform evidence-based recommendations to policymakers, aimed at regulating or managing land use practices that threaten key habitats, particularly the conversion of pastures into arable land.
Results
SABUKO has collected baseline data that spans from 2019 – 2023. This data provides a snapshot of annual trends in the overall area and number of plots registered (Table 1), and plots registered under different types of ownership (Table 2), land use (Table 3) and land types (Table 4). SABUKO will continue to track annual trends through 2027, at which point they will conduct their analysis to determine the current driving factors of land conversion.
Table 1: Land conversion per year, total number of plots registered.
Table 2: Land conversion per year according to ownership type.
Table 3: Land conversion per year, according to land use category.
Table 4: Land conversion per year, across different land type categories.
