Abstract
Vineyards have assumed a key role as rural landmarks in recent decades. Investigating vineyard dynamics and contexts may reveal various economic, cultural, and environmental aspects of rural landscapes, which can be linked to land-use changes and major soil degradation processes, including soil erosion. As a contribution to rural landscape studies, the purpose of this work is to investigate the spatial distribution of vineyard plots in the Valencian community, located in the eastern area of the Iberian Peninsula, focusing on the final product, the type of vineyard and how long each vineyard has been settled over time. The work provides a comprehensive analysis of a wine-growing landscape, considering strategic (spatial) assets in present and past times. Vineyards were interpreted as a distinctive landmarks that give value to local economies; basic knowledge of how long different types of wine plots have been present in the Valencian community is useful when estimating their degree of sustainability and formulating suggestions, policies, and strategies to prevent processes of landscape degradation at various spatial scales.
Highlights
In the last few decades, vineyards have assumed a key role in the primary sector
Basic indicators are represented in maps (Figure 2): The greatest landscape fragmentation of vineyards was observed inland of the Valencian community, and in local contexts where the average the number of wine parcels in each municipality (a);age of the vineyards is around 5 and 25 years
The northern area displays a more homogeneous and dense vineyard landscape, revealing a the density of wine parcels understood as the number of parcels on the municipal surface area (b); historical presence of vineyards
Summary
In the last few decades, vineyards have assumed a key role in the primary sector. Their recent expansion in several rural areas in Mediterranean Europe reflects a cultural heritage (re)acquired from a local product revalued over time. The ‘terroir’ notion was introduced to highlight the contribution of vineyards to cultural, social, and economic heritage [4,5]. The Mediterranean agricultural landscapes in Europe achieve a multifunctional role that surpass the traditional production of commodities and food, by providing further advantageous services, e.g., socioeconomic viability of rural areas and protection of biodiversity [6,7,8,9,10,11]. A Agriculture 2019, 9, 59; doi:10.3390/agriculture9030059 www.mdpi.com/journal/agriculture
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