Abstract
Depopulation of rural areas is a widespread phenomenon that has occurred in most industrialized countries, and has contributed significantly to a reduction in the productivity of agro-ecological resources. In this study, we identified the main trends in the dynamics of rural populations in the Central Pyrenees in the 20th C and early 21st C, and used density independent and density dependent models and identified the main factors that have influenced the dynamics. In addition, we investigated the change in the power law distribution of population size in those periods. Populations exhibited density-dependent positive feedback between 1960 and 2010, and a long-term positive correlation between agricultural activity and population size, which has resulted in a free-scale population distribution that has been disrupted by the collapse of the traditional agricultural society and by emigration to the industrialized cities. We concluded that complex socio-ecological systems that have strong feedback mechanisms can contribute to disruptive population collapses, which can be identified by changes in the pattern of population distribution.
Highlights
The depopulation of rural areas, which is common in most developed countries, has, paradoxically, increased in parallel with global population growth [1], which is one of the most important challenges facing civilization [2]
Human population dynamics are characterized by steady increases that are occasionally interrupted by collapses that are caused by density-dependent and density-independent factors, which are followed by rapid increases [10,11,12]
Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) indicated that the density-independent model had the best fit to the data of the dynamics of rural populations in the Spanish Central Pyrenees in the 20th C and early 21st C with the exception of Panticosa population that fitted better to the Ricker model (Table 1)
Summary
The depopulation of rural areas, which is common in most developed countries, has, paradoxically, increased in parallel with global population growth [1], which is one of the most important challenges facing civilization [2]. At a time when many areas are faced with problems associated with rapid human population growth, others are confronted with the effects of the rapid population loss. The effects of those changes on the distribution of populations have important. The most significant changes in the size and distribution of human populations occurred in the 1960s, when per capita growth rate was at the maximum. Thereafter, populations decreased steadily in rural areas [2, 15]
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