Abstract
Sustainable territorial management requires reliable assessment of the impact of conservation policies on landscape structure and dynamics. Euro-Mediterranean regions present a remarkable biodiversity which is linked in part to traditional land use practices and which is currently threatened by global change. The effectiveness of one-decade conservation policies against land use changes was examined in Central Spain (Madrid Autonomous Community). A Markov model of landscape dynamics was parameterized with CORINE Land Cover information and transition matrices were obtained. The methods were applied in both protected and unprotected areas to examine whether the intensity and direction of key land use changes —urbanisation, agricultural intensification and land abandonment— differed significantly depending on the protection status of those areas. Protected areas experienced slower rates of agricultural intensification processes and faster rates of land abandonment, with respect to those which occurred in unprotected areas. It illustrates how simple mathematical tools and models —parameterized with available data— can provide to managers and policy makers useful indicators for conservation policy assessment and identification of land use transitions.
Highlights
Global change is a major threat for biodiversity in ecosystems with potential species losses due to habitat loss, fragmentation and climatic changes (Heywood and Dulloo, 2005)
At second and third level of CORINE data (Table 1), the urbanization process of agricultural and natural areas has come from an elevated number of classes and with higher intensity in unprotected areas
Our results show that the protection of areas has reduced the intensity of agricultural and urbanisation activities, whereas it was associated with a more severe land abandonment
Summary
Global change is a major threat for biodiversity in ecosystems with potential species losses due to habitat loss, fragmentation and climatic changes (Heywood and Dulloo, 2005). The Mediterranean Basin harbours a rather high diversity of communities and traditional landscapes created and maintained by human activity over the last millennia (Blondel and Aronson, 1995; Naveh, 1987), and it is considered one of the hotspots most threatened by habitat loss (Brooks et al, 2002) In this region, both traditional and cultural landscapes have been created and maintained by human activity linked to abiotic complexity (Blondel, 2006), traditional land use such as agricultural and sylvopastoral systems (González-Bernáldez, 1991; Buisson and Duitot, 2006). Both traditional and cultural landscapes have been created and maintained by human activity linked to abiotic complexity (Blondel, 2006), traditional land use such as agricultural and sylvopastoral systems (González-Bernáldez, 1991; Buisson and Duitot, 2006) This land use practice has resulted in agroecosystems of high diversity (Marañón, 1988)
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