A Comprehensive Assessment of the Ecological Situation in the Closed Administrative-Territorial Entities of the Russian Federation

— This paper presents the results of a comprehensive assessment of the ecological situation in closed administrative–territorial entities (CATEs) of the Russian Federation using the composite index of the ecological stress and cluster analysis. The work employs a database compiled by the authors based on open sources of the Federal Agency of Water Resources and Federal Service for Environmental, Technological, and Nuclear Supervision, atmospheric pollution EMEP models, and USGS satellite images. Two CATE typologies are constructed based on the level of the ecological stress using the cluster analysis. Specialization is shown to be an essential factor in formation of ecological situation in the CATE towns due to technological processes employed at the town-forming enterprises. CATEs are shown to affect mostly the water resources and radiation situation. The groups of towns with the highest ecological stress and areas of their concentrations are located in the Urals, European North of Russia, and Krasnoyarsk krai. A favorable ecological situation in the cities and towns is associated with the natural conditions and geographic position relative to the large polluting centers. The ecological situation is observed to be stable and favorable in a majority of Russian CATEs due to the absence of substantial pollution sources in the area. Of the CATE towns, ecological conditions are found to be most critical in Novouralsk.