Wall-to-Wall Parcel-Level Mapping of Agricultural Land Abandonment in the Polish Carpathians

Abstract

Accurate estimations of the extent of agricultural land abandonment (ALA) are critical to the sustainable management of agricultural resources and forestry, the understanding of ALA determinants, and the development of future agricultural policies. Although ALA is widespread in Europe, mapping it over large areas using remote sensing data is difficult as a result of the complexity of this phenomenon. This study aims to develop methods for a detailed wall-to-wall regional-scale mapping of ALA using vegetation height and secondary forest succession indicators. The rates and distribution of ALA were analyzed at the parcel and communal level in the Polish Carpathians using a high-resolution vegetation height model (VHM) derived from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) point clouds and topographic data. Depending on the parcel-level secondary forest succession threshold (10, 20, and 50%), the regional ALA rates were 18.8, 9.0, and 2.1%, respectively. Regardless of the threshold, abandoned grasslands covered about three times more area than abandoned croplands. The highest ALA rates were observed in communes located in the western part of the study area, as well as east and south of Rzeszów. We found that areas receiving European Union Common Agricultural Policy payments very rarely showed signs of secondary forest succession and land abandonment. The developed method proved to be effective for detailed ALA mapping at various spatial scales.

Outmigration and Land-Use Change: A Case Study from the Middle Hills of Nepal

“…This shows that the causes of underutilization and abandonment of farmland are not straight forward and thus, complex, as also shown by various studies [42,60,[62][63][64][65][66][67][68].…”

Determining the Intangible: Detecting Land Abandonment at Local Scale

“…The preliminary assumption was that dividing the data into height classes could be helpful in determining the period of time over which the land was agriculturally abandoned. We assumed that during the first two years of abandonment, grasses and annual and biennial species would start to appear, followed, during the next two years, by shrubs and perennial herbs [45]. The germination of trees is likely to occur when ALA has been present in the area for more than 5 years [46].…”

Assessment of Changes in a Viewshed in the Western Carpathians Landscape as a Result of Reforestation

“…The main reasons were the lack of agricultural subsidies, decreased profitability, availability of better-paying jobs outside agricultural sectors and rural-urban migration [69,70]. This emphasizes the importance of socioeconomic factors for farmers' decisions related to the cessation of land cultivation [71].…”