Abandonment and Recultivation of Agricultural Lands in Slovakia—Patterns and Determinants from the Past to the Future

Pazúr, Róbert; Lieskovský, Juraj; Bürgi, Matthias; Müller, Daniel; Lieskovský, Tibor; Zhang, Zhen; Prischchepov, Alexander V.

doi:10.3390/land9090316

Cited by 41 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 105 publications

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“…The significant difference in the distance to old-woods reflects the general tendency to overgrow the fields located near the forest edge and further from the village first. Pazúr et al [70] showed, for Slovakia, that those abandoned farmlands which were located further away from the forest edge were re-cultivated. Furthermore, in Russia, the transition from farmland to forest was more likely to be closer to the forest edge [63].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Mature Post-Agricultural Forests in the Polish Eastern Carpathians with Archival Remote Sensing Data

et al. 2021

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Post-WWII displacements in the Polish Carpathians resulted in widespread land abandonment. Most of the pre-war agricultural areas are now covered with secondary forests, which will soon reach the felling age. Mapping their exact cover is crucial to investigate succession–regeneration processes and to determine their role in the landscape, before making management decisions. Our goal was to map post-agricultural forests in the Polish Eastern Carpathians using archival remote sensing data, and to assess their connectivity with pre-displacement forests. We used German Flown Aerial Photography from 1944 to map agricultural lands and forests from before displacements, and Corona satellite images to map agricultural lands which converted into the forest as a result of this event. We classified archival images using Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA) and compared the output with the current forest cover derived from Sentinel-2. Our results showed that mature (60–70 years old) post-agricultural forests comprise 27.6% of the total forest area, while younger post-agricultural forests comprise 9%. We also demonstrated that the secondary forests fill forest gaps more often than form isolated patches: 77.5% of patches are connected with the old-woods (forests that most likely have never been cleared for agriculture). Orthorectification and OBIA classification of German Flown Aerial Photographs and Corona satellite images made it possible to accurately determine the spatial extent of post-agricultural forest. This, in turn, paves the way for the implementation of site-specific forest management practices to support the regeneration of secondary forests and their biodiversity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Mature Post-Agricultural Forests in the Polish Eastern Carpathians with Archival Remote Sensing Data

et al. 2021

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“…For example, the HILDA model reported an increase of the abandonment rates in 1990-2000 (49.9 km 2 /year) and an extreme peak in the period 2000-2010 (290.8 km 2 /year). Increased abandonment after transition to a market-oriented economy in the period 1990-2000, followed by a decrease due to EU accession support in the period 2000-2010, was reported for Slovakia [36,41,43] and for other post-socialistic countries [24,70,71]. Because of the uncertainties related to historical land cover modelling and because of the validation results, we consider that the CHLUD dataset is a more reliable long-term data source.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, EU accession and implementation of the Common Agriculture Policy triggered the restoration of agriculture in some areas [28,[39][40][41][42]. The agricultural land abandonment in Slovakia mostly occurred in the mountains, and it was strongly related to distance from the national capital (Bratislava), annual mean temperatures, proximity to forest edges and slope steepness [43]. Abandonment primarily affected small-scale traditional agricultural landscapes [34], and it caused adverse impacts on biodiversity and cultural heritage [44][45][46].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cropland Abandonment in Slovakia: Analysis and Comparison of Different Data Sources

Lieskovský

Lieskovská

2021

Land

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This study compares different nationwide multi-temporal spatial data sources and analyzes the cropland area, cropland abandonment rates and transformation of cropland to other land cover/land use categories in Slovakia. Four multi-temporal land cover/land use data sources were used: The Historic Land Dynamics Assessment (HILDA), the Carpathian Historical Land Use Dataset (CHLUD), CORINE Land Cover (CLC) data and Landsat images classification. We hypothesized that because of the different spatial, temporal and thematic resolution of the datasets, there would be differences in the resulting cropland abandonment rates. We validated the datasets, compared the differences, interpreted the results and combined the information from the different datasets to form an overall picture of long-term cropland abandonment in Slovakia. The cropland area increased until the Second World War, but then decreased after transition to the communist regime and sharply declined following the 1989 transition to an open market economy. A total of 49% of cropland area has been transformed to grassland, 34% to forest and 15% to urban areas. The Historical Carpathian dataset is the more reliable long-term dataset, and it records 19.65 km2/year average cropland abandonment for 1836–1937, 154.44 km2/year for 1938–1955 and 140.21 km2/year for 1956–2012. In comparison, the Landsat, as a recent data source, records 142.02 km2/year abandonment for 1985–2000 and 89.42 km2/year for 2000–2010. These rates, however, would be higher if the dataset contained urbanisation data and more precise information on afforestation. The CORINE Land Cover reflects changes larger than 5 ha, and therefore the reported cropland abandonment rates are lower.

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“…We evaluated the models using the calculated area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for training and validation data with a cross-validation approach, where 80% of data were used for training and 20% for validation (Elith et al, 2008;Pazúr et al, 2020;Pontius & Schneider, 2001). To parameterize the BRT models, we assessed the sensitivity of the models to the resulting AUC; namely, we tested the selection of the number of selected trees, tree complexity level (from 1 to 9), and learning rate (from 0.1 to 0.001, with a stepwise increment of 0.005).…”

Section: Revealing the Spatial Determinants Of Disturbance Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple trajectories of grassland fragmentation, degradation, and recovery in Russia's steppes

et al. 2021

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Over the 20th century, the Eurasian steppes underwent drastic land-cover changes.Much progress was made studying cropland expansion and the post-1990 (i.e., post-Soviet) agricultural land abandonment in Eurasia. However, the alteration of steppe landscapes may include other disturbances, such as oil and gas development, formal and informal roads and garbage dumps, which were not systematically documented.Considering the example of the steppe Orenburg Province in Russia, we reconstructed agricultural land-cover change dynamics using Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery from 1990 to 2018. Furthermore, we used very high-resolution imagery and assessed the patterns and determinants of other steppe landscape anthropogenic disturbances. Our study showed that, despite steppe recovery due to widespread cropland abandonment from 1990 to 2018, the steppes, including the recovered steppe patches, underwent fragmentation due to informal roads, oil and gas development, shrub encroachment, garbage dumps and quarries, as well as abandonment of settlements and buildings. Only 6.4% of the sampled 7859 1Â1 km blocks in 2018 showing grassland extent had no documented disturbances. The mapped disturbances occurred primarily near settlements and roads, while some disturbances occurred in remote areas. Given the accessibility of steppes, our study calls for a urgent need to systematically document alternatives to agricultural land uses in the steppes of Eurasia and other parts of the global grassland biome.

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Abandonment and Recultivation of Agricultural Lands in Slovakia—Patterns and Determinants from the Past to the Future

Cited by 41 publications

References 105 publications

Mapping Mature Post-Agricultural Forests in the Polish Eastern Carpathians with Archival Remote Sensing Data

Mapping Mature Post-Agricultural Forests in the Polish Eastern Carpathians with Archival Remote Sensing Data

Cropland Abandonment in Slovakia: Analysis and Comparison of Different Data Sources

Multiple trajectories of grassland fragmentation, degradation, and recovery in Russia's steppes

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