Cambios en los usos y cubiertas del suelo y los efectos en la vulnerabilidad en las comarcas de montaña de Cataluña. Del rol del fuego como herramienta de gestión a los incendios como amenaza

An Assessment and Spatial Modelling of Agricultural Land Abandonment in Spain (2015–2030)

This article presents a study based on the outputs from the LUISA Territorial modelling platform (Joint Research Centre of the European Commission) focused on regional and local future projections of land abandonment between 2015 and 2030. Spain is taken as representative of one of the countries highly affected by agricultural land abandonment in the European Union. The most relevant factors driving land abandonment (biophysical, agroeconomics, farm structure and demographic) are described and mapped. Results from the analysis reveal that the Galicia region, northern Spain (Asturias, Cantabria, Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia), north-eastern Spain (Aragón region), central Pyrenees/Ebro basin (Huesca, Navarra, Lleida) and south-eastern Spain (Murcia, Almería, Alicante, Málaga) are expected to undergo important abandonment processes. The study also concludes that land abandonment within mountainous, high nature value farmland and Natura 2000 areas is lower compared to the outside area without conservation and protection measures.

Determinants of Land Use/Cover Change in the Iberian Peninsula (1990–2012) at Municipal Level

This work analyzes the determinants associated with main land use/cover changes in the Iberian Peninsula during the 1990–2012 period using a decision tree model. Our main objective is to identify broad-scale patterns that associate the characteristics of geographic areas with the dominant land use/cover change process based on CORINE Land Cover (Coordination of Information on the Environment) and defined in a previously published work. Biophysical, structural and socioeconomic variables were considered as potentially explanatory of the dominant change process at municipal scale. The resulting model allowed identification of a common pattern in Portugal and Spain (urbanization being highly associated to areas already densely populated in the previous period), but also some diverging ones. In particular, dominant trends in Portuguese territory appear to be highly determined by wildfire occurrence. In contrast, Spanish municipalities showed more diverse patterns, usually associated to biophysical determinants like average forest productivity or average terrain slope.

Land Use Changes in Iberian Peninsula 1990–2012

This work aims to provide a comprehensive, wall-to-wall analysis of land use/cover changes in the continental areas of Portugal and Spain between 1990 and 2012. This overall objective is developed into two main research questions: (1) Whether differences between the extent and prevalence of changes exist between both countries and (2) which are the hotspots of change (areas where a given land use/cover transition dominates the landscape) in each country. We used Corine Land Cover in three different points in time (1990, 2000, 2012) to explore eight characteristic land cover transitions and carried out a cluster analysis at LAU2 level (municipalities in Spain, parishes in Portugal) that allowed to identify the areas in which each transition was dominant. The main findings include the decline of agricultural area and the increase of urbanized and artificial covers in both countries, but different trends followed by forest cover, with an increase in Spain and a decrease in Portugal. At the same time, the spatial analysis provided an overview of the main gradients of change related to tensions between agricultural intensification–extensification, on the one hand, and deforestation–afforestation, on the other.