For making reliable assessment of the state and rate of land degradation
in Russia we decided to revise the existing national and international
inventories and maps and estimate the credibility and
accuracy of the data in these sources. The following criteria were
used to confirm the credibility of the products: 1) the results have
been obtained by direct observation and measurement, either in
the field or using remote sensing data, 2) the number of observations
has been big enough for making extrapolation of the point observations
to the entire area of the region, 3) the results obtained using
one method have been validated or extended using another method,
e.g. field studies on key polygons have been extrapolated with the
help of satellite images. The aim of the study was to outline
the gaps and the ways forward in the land degradation studies in
Northern Eurasia in order to improve the quality of estimations of
the economic cost of land degradation.