Hotspots of land use change in Europe

Abstract

Assessing changes in the extent and management intensity of land use is crucial to understanding land-system dynamics and their environmental and social outcomes. Yet, changes in the spatial patterns of land management intensity, and thus how they might relate to changes in the extent of land uses, remains unclear for many world regions. We compiled and analyzed high-resolution, spatiallyexplicit land-use change indicators capturing changes in both the extent and management intensity of cropland, grazing land, forests, and urban areas for all of Europe for the period 1990-2006. Based on these indicators, we identified hotspots of change and explored the spatial concordance of area versus intensity changes. We found a clear East-West divide with regard to agriculture, with stronger cropland declines and lower management intensity in the East compared to the West. Yet, these patterns were not uniform and diverging patterns of intensification in areas highly suitable for farming, and disintensification and cropland contraction in more marginal areas emerged. Despite the moderate overall rates of change, many regions in Europe fell into at least one land-use change hotspot during 1990-2006, often related to a spatial reorganization of land use (i.e., co-occurring area decline and intensification or co-occurring area increase and disintensification). Our analyses highlighted the diverse spatial patterns and heterogeneity of land-use changes in Europe, and the importance of jointly considering changes in the extent and management intensity of land use, as well as feedbacks among land-use sectors. Given this spatial differentiation of land-use change, and thus its environmental impacts, spatially-explicit assessments of land-use dynamics are important for context-specific, regionalized land-use policy making.

Europe: the paradox of landscape change : A case-study based contribution to the understanding of landscape transitions

“…An increase of pasture land was not observed, but only Heerde (NL) contains significant grassland area and here on the contrary important grassland areas were converted to cropland and urban area. Kuemmerle et al (2016) found that overall changes were moderate, from <1% (grazing land) to 5% (urban area) between 1990-2006, which was similar to our findings (Table 14). Stürck and Verburg (2016) concluded that the selection of scale and used indicators very much influence the findings of such studies.…”

“…Over time an increase in natural habitat is seen in most case studies (Table 16). A study of hotspots of land use change in Europe at NUTS-2 level revealed that most widespread land use change between 1990 and 2006 was cropland decline, followed by forest area expansion and pasture increase (Kuemmerle et al 2016). This trend is confirmed even at smaller spatial scale in this study, where we found that in most cases also the food production potential decreased and timber production increased.…”

“…CORINE has a large minimum mapping unit of 25 hectares) on landscape elements and landscape structure. Another shortcoming is that agricultural abandonment is poorly captured by CORINE (Kuemmerle et al 2016;). Regional studies focus on specific landscapes, whereby base maps with a standard level of detail, or sometimes field data are used to analyse the landscape change occurring at micro level (e.g.…”

“…By 'Landscape' is meant 'an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors' (Council of Europe 2000). The trajectories of landscape change differ largely across Europe, even within comparable land use systems: transition processes in abandoned olive yards in Lesvos (Greece) differ from those in Liguria (Italy), or Portugal (Kuemmerle et al 2016;. The trajectories of change can be influenced by national and international policies, environmental conditions, economic, social or cultural factors.…”

Forest functions and space: a geohistorical perspective of European forests

“…Moreover, large areas that had been previously recovered forest and were cultivated or leased for grazing, are now abandoned. This phenomena occurred in particular on the mountains of southern Europe (Kuemmerle et al 2016). This opens an interesting debate in academic circles, on the possible future roles of these forests.…”