2.3 Landuse/landcover change assessment
We used several regional studies for the quantitative assessment of changes in landuse and landcover. Thus, cropland and forest areas for 1987-2015 were calculated based on Buchner et al. (2020). While glacier areas for 1960-2014 were derived from Tielidze and Wheate’s (2018) study. For several rivers (e.g., Ardon, Argun, Genaldon, and Sunzha), glacier areas were calculated manually from the GLIMS database (Raupet al. , 2007) since there was no requested information about them in Tielidze and Wheate paper. To estimate landuse and landcover change, we applied the same technique as above (Eq. (1-3)).