Assessment of Moscow’s New Territory for Biodiversity Conservation Using Remote Sensing

In recent years, the territory of Moscow has greatly increased in size, which led to a sharp decline in the biodiversity of many territories that were not part of Moscow before. Using remote sensing methods, the nature of vegetation and dynamics of land use in New Moscow for the 2014–2019 period were assessed in the article. Forests occupy about 42% of the territory of New Moscow, and cultural plantations account for about 28.5%. From 2014 to 2019, the area of residential sites increased by 8%, the area of meadows decreased by 7%, and that of forests—by 1%. The main areas for biodiversity conservation in New Moscow are specially protected natural areas (SPNAs). It is necessary to create an ecological frame of protected areas and monitor it by interpreting space images. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.