Emerging Land Use Challenges and Overlapping Interests in a Remote Community

Okinskiy district of Buryatia is characterised by the entanglement of heterogeneous economies formed by the global demand for gold and jade, the remnants of Soviet planning systems at the local and municipal levels, traditional Soyot and Buryat land use practices and nascent adventure and recreational tourist flows. In a situation where most of the economic and social relations remain informal and rarely captured in the official documents, landscapes become the visible marker of the changing, intersecting and sometimes conflicting interests of these actors. In this paper, we analyse and juxtapose social and landscape data to examine how these relations are manifested in the land cover, which is a valuable proxy for studies of landscapes in a situation of remoteness. Using interviews and observations, we collected and analysed data on pertinent social, cultural and professional ties and examined local land-use practices and diverse economic interests during fieldwork in August 2020. The analysis of forest change was carried out using statistical and forest plan data, and a land-cover map was created using Landsat satellite images from 2020. The resulting map illustrates preservation of a traditional way of life in the form of seasonal migration infrastructure which includes summer pastures with summer houses and informal roads connecting them with settlements. However, multi-temporal maps with field data validation are needed to support more detailed accounts of change captured in the interviews.