Аннотация:Land cover change is considered to be one of the main factors of biodiversity dynamics. Unfortunately, very often land cover transformation has negative consequences, such as loss of habitat, fragmentation or degradation. For proper environmental management, the quantitative assessment of land cover change is very important. This research devoted to such an analysis of land cover transformation in Australia and Argentina between 2001 and 2012. Basing on the MODIS data, available at Global Land Cover Facility, we detect transitions between land cover categories (comparing rasters of the years 2001 and 2012), identify processes driving these changes, verify some of the global trends and compare findings for Australia and Argentina. Some of the factors of land cover transformation are discussed, both natural and anthropogenic. One of the most significant processes for both countries is shrub encroachment. It is observed on up to hundreds of thousands of square kilometres and takes 2-4% of the countries’ areas. Besides this, the widespread processes are the degradation of woody vegetation with an increase in contribution from open spaces in unforested zones (2-3% of the countries area) and overgrowing of croplands (2-3%). In Australia, we detect the increase in contribution from tree vegetation (2% of Australia area). In Argentina – decline in the contribution from shrublands (2% of Argentina area). The share of total areas of land cover transformation is about the same for the study regions and is estimated about 13-15% of the countries territories.