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This article considers the ecological consequences of the transformation of agricultural nature management in post-Soviet Russia in a regional context. It has been revealed that approximately half the regions have changed their specialization from livestock farming to crop growing. The regional indices (1990-2014) of agricultural production and indices of resources being utilized (cultivated areas, livestock population, and fertilizer utilization) have been compared. The phenomenon of ecological and resource dissonance in agriculture, which leads to degradation of agrolandscapes, has been revealed. It has been established that the more successful the development of regional agriculture is, the higher the resource and ecological dissonance. Two groups of regions that differ by diametrically opposite ecological trajectories have been distinguished: (1) regions with accelerated agricultural simplification, where changes in regional climatic characteristics can be expected; (2) Central Chernozem regions, in which excessive utilization of agrolandscapes threatens their accelerated ecological degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to the revival in the interest of transferring a part of the Ob-Irtysh basin river flow into countries of Central Asia, this paper analyzes the experience in grounding this project within the period from the 1970s to the first half of the 1980s and shows the basic methodological errors. It considers the normative legal bases and procedure for making an ecological and economic assessment that must be compulsorily implemented when grounding projects for redistributing water resources between river basins. A question is posed about the permissibility of withdrawing a part of the Ob-Irtysh river flow under modern conditions (the economic and ecological aspects). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]