Abstract
As cropland management and land use shifted towards more intensive practices, global land degradation increased drastically. Understanding relationships between ecological and socioeconomic drivers of soil and landscape degradation within these landscapes in economically dynamic contexts such as the Mediterranean region, requires multi-target and multi-scalar approaches covering long-term periods. This study provides an original approach for identifying desertification risk drivers and sustainable land management strategies within Italian agro-forest districts. An Environmental Sensitivity Area (ESA) approach, based on four thematic indicators (climate, soil, vegetation and land-use) and a composite index of desertification risk (ESAI), was used to evaluate changes in soil vulnerability and landscape degradation between the years 1960 and 2010. A multivariate model was developed to identify the most relevant drivers causing changes in land susceptibility at the district scale. Larger districts, and those with a higher proportion of their total surface area classified as agro-forest, had a significantly lower increase in land susceptibility to degradation during the 50 years when compared with the remaining districts. We conclude that preserving economic viability and ecological connectivity of traditional, extensive agricultural systems is a key measure to mitigate the desertification risk in the Mediterranean region.
Highlights
Agricultural systems evolved over centuries without exerting a significant impact on natural ecosystems [1]
Land susceptibility increased in southern Italy districts but the association with latitude was milder in recent decades
While the percentage of agro-forest land in the total district area correlated negatively with the Environmental Sensitivity Area Index (ESAI), the level of susceptibility to degradation was unaffected by the size of rural districts
Summary
Agricultural systems evolved over centuries without exerting a significant impact on natural ecosystems [1]. The increased demand for food, fiber and fuel products has led to a rapid change in land use and to the progressive transformation of traditional agronomic techniques into high-input methods of land-resource exploitation [2,3], with a negative impact on non-renewable natural resources such as soil [4,5,6]. In Europe, non-urban landscapes are dominated by agricultural land, covering nearly 45% of the continental surface area [11], in part because agricultural systems intensified in the aftermath of World War II as a response to increased food demand, technological changes and developmental policies. The resulting changes in the use of land, cropping practices and socioeconomic characteristics of local communities have added to the progressive abandonment of marginal land, altering the structure and composition of rural landscapes [16,17,18]
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