IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v12y2023i10p1946-d1263799.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessment of the Conservation Value of Abandoned Land on Gogland Island, Baltic Sea

Author

Listed:
  • Igor Popov

    (Department of Applied Ecology, Faculty of Biology, Saint Petersburg State University, Universitetskaya n. 7/9, Saint Petersburg 199034, Russia
    Nizhne-Svirsky Nature Reserve, Lodeynoye Pole, ul. Praviy bereg r. Svir, d. 1, 187715, Russia)

  • Anton Iurmanov

    (Main Botanical Garden of the Russian Academy of Science Named after N. V. Tsitsin RAS, St. Botanicheskaya 4, Moscow 127276, Russia)

  • Evgeny Abakumov

    (Department of Applied Ecology, Faculty of Biology, Saint Petersburg State University, Universitetskaya n. 7/9, Saint Petersburg 199034, Russia)

Abstract

Gogland Island, located in the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea, was densely populated in the past but has been nearly abandoned since the Second World War. The self-restoration of wildlife takes place there. Recent research on the island aimed to evaluate the conservation value of this process. It was expected that the island would demonstrate a standard for the perfect state of protected areas of the boreal zone of Europe. The island has been overgrown with forests; open areas occupy insignificant parts and tend to shrink. Picturesque landscapes have been formed, but the conservation value of these areas are questionable as the biodiversity is rather low there. They contain “empty forest” that is partly impassable. The island demonstrates that to achieve the maximum effect for biodiversity conservation, the abandonment of land without any management would be insufficient. The fate of the island partly supports the concept of Pleistocene rewilding: a mosaic of forests and meadows, maintained by ungulates, should be considered a normal state of environments.

Suggested Citation

  • Igor Popov & Anton Iurmanov & Evgeny Abakumov, 2023. "Assessment of the Conservation Value of Abandoned Land on Gogland Island, Baltic Sea," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-9, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:12:y:2023:i:10:p:1946-:d:1263799
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/12/10/1946/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/12/10/1946/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:12:y:2023:i:10:p:1946-:d:1263799. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.