ИСТИНА

The Samur, the largest river in Southern Dagestan and Northern Azerbaijan, forms a vast complex and highly dynamic delta landscape along the Caspian Sea. Samur delta is characterized with diverse habitats of outstanding nature value such as the remaining subtropical liana forests with Hyrcanian elements, reedbeds along the mouths of main channels, near-shore sand dunes and others. Although the Samur delta wetlands were designated as an International Bird Area in 2007 and a national park in 2019, these habitats still have unfavourable conservational status due to rapid changes in Caspian sea level, withdrawal of transboundary water resources of Samur river for irrigation, local transformation of land use patterns. To distinguish, accessed and map current, short-term and long-term threats to the environmental condition of Samur delta wetlands we use a prolonging time series of high-detailed air and space imagery. For the latest 80 years period the main drivers of water regime transformations and divergent land use changes were revealed for the area in study. In particular, coastal wetlands have degraded under the severe and persistent abrasion since the 1950-s as local but drastic transformations of shorelines and channel network near the accreted mouth of Small Samur have been fixed since the early 2000s. Along with the deferred impacts of water management activities and sea-level changes to the ecological status of wetlands the increasing forest grazing and recreation additionally threat to the large part of Samur delta landscape.