70 Years of Land Use/Land Cover Changes in the Apennines (Italy): A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Land use science usually adopts a case study approach to investigate landscape change processes, so we considered a meta-analysis an appropriate tool for summarizing general patterns and heterogeneous findings across multiple case studies over a large geographic area. Mountain landscapes in the Apennines (Italy) have undergone significant variations in the last century due to regional and national socio-economic changes. In this work, we reviewed 51 manuscripts from different databases and examined 57 case studies. We explored heterogeneous data sets, adopting a stepwise approach to select the case studies: Step 1, a general overview of the main studies; Step 2, an analysis of the features of the study sites and of land-use/cover transitions; Step 3, a landscape pattern analysis. We standardized the processing methods to obtain a new set of homogeneous data suitable for comparative analysis. After some pre-processing of the selected paper due to the broad heterogeneity of the data, we calculated common landscape metrics ex novo. We obtained digital images used to perform automatic segmentation with eCognition Developer 64 software. Our review indicated that most case studies were in Central and Southern Italy, 83% were examined at local scale, 77% carried out change detection, but only 38% included both change detection and landscape spatial pattern analysis. The results revealed a clear trend of forest expansion (+78%) and the reduction of croplands (−49%) and grasslands (−19%). We did not find significant changes in the landscape spatial patterns.

Integrating Remote-Sensed and Historical Geodata to Assess Interactions Between Rural Buildings and Agroforestry Land

“…As highlighted by the obtained results, the study shows that the territory, during the 62 years of analysis, has changed in both case studies and in line with the trend that has occurred in many inland areas of the Mediterranean region and especially along the Italian Apennines (Malandra et al, 2018). In particular, the main typical dynamics are related to the reduction of agricultural areas in favour to natural areas.…”

Patterns and drivers of forest landscape change in the Apennines range, Italy

“…Similarly, the Apennines have experienced dramatic land cover change and forest expansion dynamics over a 60-year period (1954-2012) (Malandra et al 2018), affecting almost half the total land surface over a broad elevation range. Unlike other studies in this region (e.g., Benini et al 2010), we have extended the analysis to the entire Apennine range, selecting study landscapes around the most important mountain groups (> 2000 m a.s.l.).…”

“…Previous analyses of LUC in the Apennines have been implemented for relatively small localities and have used varying sampling protocols, such that they are often not directly comparable (Malandra et al 2018). To better understand the influence of LUC on landscape structure at the regional scale, we conducted a land cover change analysis of the entire Apennine range with a homogeneous sampling design and a rigorous method of image analysis, using 20 replicate mountain landscapes.…”

“…Unchanged pixels (0) Changed pixels 1 within key environmental strata. Since the 1950s, following a period of widespread depopulation and land abandonment, the Apennines have experienced an overall forest expansion (Vacchiano et al 2017;Malandra et al 2018). Forest cover gains were similar at the two main exposures (NE and SW), but significantly greater at lower elevation (below 1300 m a.s.l.).…”

Evolution of Hay Meadows between 1956, 1986, and 2016 and Its Relation to the Characteristics and Location of the Parcels in the Valley of the River Esera (Pyrenees, Spain)

“…This reduction is linked to exogenous factors derived from changes in the productive and market systems [13,37,38], to the adaptation of the productive systems to the characteristics of the environment, and to the dynamics of the farms themselves (size, labor, capitalization capacity, inheritance, etc.) that are not contemplated here [1,[39][40][41][42]. This phenomenon is not exclusive and is recognized in other mountain agro-livestock areas [14,23,[43][44][45][46][47].…”