ИСТИНА

Many of the world’s terraced mountains no longer support the local economy as an agricultural resource having transformed into tourism objects or are abandoned. The role of old terraces as historical cultural landscape and part of the present mountain ecosystems and as well as problems of transferring local knowledge between generations are discussed. The agricultural terraces of the Caucasus are considered with special attention to Dagestan, a region with ancient and diverse terraced farming testifying to high engineering and agrarian culture of the multi-ethnic local peoples and solidarity of communities. With a shortage of land and water resources, the terraces of Dagestan for many centuries were used for high-intensity agriculture, and at present, for some of mountain communities, the agricultural use of terraced lands is the main economic basis. Under climate changes, to avoid possible collapse of unmanaged terraces new regional development programs include renovation and agricultural use of terraced slopes. A new look at the terraces as a historical heritage allows to include them in tourist routes. Under the climate change, to what altitude level can terraces be effectively used for agricultural and recreational purposes? Pilot climatic studies using satellite vegetation Indexes and bioclimatic Indexes show temperature rise and stable wetting in the mountains during last decades. This leads to improvement in vegetative conditions including fruit crops, and an increase in the height of terraced gardens up to 2000 m a.s.l. It is proposed to identify specific terraced complexes, especially dated ones, as tourist sites containing information about past socio-ecological systems and role in the modern mountain landscape.