A century of change in coastal sedimentary landscapes in the Canary Islands (Spain) — Change, processes, and driving forces

Abstract

A global understanding of landscape dynamics, through local case studies, is a prime topic in land change science. Consequently, this approach should be urgently applied to changing and heavily transformed environments, such as coastal areas. The aim of this work is to study landscape changes, comparatively, by focusing on three coastal sedimentary landscapes in the Canary Islands (Spain). We examine changes in main land cover types and identify their driving forces, actors and institutions, analyze their inter-relationships, and match each case to a case-specific development model. The three landscapes reveal very different change processes with regard to population density, land cover, and major land change processes (i.e., resource extraction, urbanization, tourism, and nature protection). We found that socioeconomic, political, and natural/spatial driving force types are of highest importance, while the local level is dominant in all three cases. The findings of this study can be used to interpret other similar landscapes worldwide. Driving-force and organizational-level patterns may be expressed in a synthesized manner as we demonstrate in this paper.