Abstract
The present study investigates changes in the rural landscapes of a Mediterranean country (Greece) over a long time period (1970–2015) encompassing economic expansions and recessions. Using a spatial distribution of 5 basic agricultural land-use classes (arable land, garden crop, vineyards, tree crop and fallow land) derived from official statistics at 6 years (1970, 1979, 1988, 1997, 2006, 2015), a quantitative analysis based on correlation and multivariate techniques was carried out to identify recent changes in the Greek agricultural landscape at prefectural level during different economic waves. Empirical results evidenced both intuitive and counter-intuitive landscape transformations, including: (i) a progressive, spatially-homogeneous reduction of cropland; (ii) a (more or less) rapid decrease in the surface of high-input crops, including arable land, horticulture and vineyards; (iii) a parallel increase in the surface of tree crops, especially olive; (iv) a spatially-heterogeneous decrease of fallow land concentrated in metropolitan and tourism districts, especially in the last decade; and, finally, (v) increasingly diversified landscapes in rural, accessible areas close to the sea coast. Based on a correlation analysis with background socioeconomic indicators, our findings reflect the multiple impacts of urbanization and land abandonment on the composition and diversity of rural landscapes. Changes in agricultural land-use were moulded by multiple drivers depending on latent transformations in rural systems and inherent conflicts with expanding urban regions. Together with market conditions and the Common Agricultural Policy subsidy regime, social contexts and the economic cycle are important when identifying long-term changes in agricultural landscapes, especially in transitional socio-ecological systems.
Highlights
In peri-urban areas, land-use changes were promoted by multiple factors revealing controversial aspects at the base of socioeconomic processes [1,2,3,4] and leading to new hybrid landscapes, altering the traditional relationship between urban and rural areas [5]
Intuitive and counter-intuitive transformations in the agricultural landscape of Greece included: (i) a spatially-homogeneous and continuous decrease of cropland; (ii) decreasing surface areas; (iii) a parallel growth of tree crops, especially olive; (iv) a spatially-heterogeneous decrease of fallow land concentrated in metropolitan and tourism districts, especially in the last decade of economic crisis; and (v) an Sustainability 2018, 10, 1159 increasingly diversified landscape in accessible areas with intermediate population density and close to the sea coast
The predominant agricultural land-use class in Greece can be associated with crops on arable land, recording the highest scores (>50%) in the whole study period, 1970–2015 (Table 1)
Summary
In peri-urban areas, land-use changes were promoted by multiple factors revealing controversial aspects at the base of socioeconomic processes [1,2,3,4] and leading to new hybrid landscapes, altering the traditional relationship between urban and rural areas [5]. Changing rural land-use, traditional cropping systems and long-established agronomic practices towards intensive and specialized food productions and high-density livestock along the urban-rural gradient has demonstrated to determine a process of “landscape homologation,” owing to the simultaneous action of ecological and socioeconomic factors [21,22,23,24,25,26,27] In both developed and emerging countries, rural landscapes are increasingly experiencing standardized development models leading to more fragmented and economically-fragile landscape structures, poor ecological quality, increased habitat fragmentation and soil degradation [28,29,30,31,32], mixing together relict semi-natural areas and scattered low-density settlements in a confused and indistinct matrix [12,13,33,34,35]
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