Long-term reconstructions of human-environment interaction in the forest zone of the European Russia: results and prospects

Victor Matasov will briefly give some information about Moscow State University, Faculty of Geography first.Then he will talk about completed project, which lasted from 2016 to 2018. The main aim of the project was to show how people changed their environment during Holocene. For that purpose several key areas situated in different natural conditions were choosen acrosstheforest zone of European Russia. Palaeoecological methods were used to study earliest periods, and for last 400 years we also used historical statistics, maps andsattelite images to reconstruct spatial distribution of land use and land cover change. To describe the contribution of natural (such as relief, soils, climate, etc.) and economic factors (distance to settlement, roads, population density, etc.) toland change we used statistical analysis.It allowed us to compare how different natural conditions infulenced land use, it's spatial structure, intensity and rates of change. And also to find links with underlying drivers of land change such as population dynamic, land management regimes and political shifts.