Environmental Monitoring of Landscape Dynamics in the East Zangezur Economic Region (Azerbaijan) Based on Remote Sensing and GIS

HistoryEffective ecological monitoring and landscape restoration planning in post-conflict mountain environments require robust spatiotemporal assessments of vegetation dynamics.This study presents a remote sensing and GIS-based assessment of landscape transformation in the East Zangezur Economic Region of Azerbaijan (7,078.248km²), which was liberated from a 30-year occupation in 2020.A large-scale natural landscape map (1:800,000; 5 types, 10 subtypes, 35 units) was compiled, and NDVI was derived from Landsat 5 TM (1990) and Landsat 9 OLI-2 (2025) imagery to quantify vegetation change via ΔNDVI differencing and overlay analysis.Of the total area, 6,740.582km² (95.23%) was classified into four trajectory classes: moderate recovery (4,291.405km²; 60.63%), moderate degradation (2,364.960km²; 33.41%), severe degradation (45.097 km²; 0.64%), and significant recovery (39.121 km²; 0.55%).Landscape units responded unevenly to vegetation change: alpine meadows exhibited the highest severe degradation signal (29.271 km²), while arid forest-shrub-steppe landscapes showed the greatest recovery share (85.65%).A background warming trend combined with precipitation deficits in the 1,500-2,500 m altitudinal band is identified as the primary climatic driver of observed NDVI dynamics.The findings provide a spatially differentiated basis for identifying ecological risk zones and support evidence-based restoration planning and long-term environmental monitoring in the region.