Agricultural abandonment in mountain areas of Europe: Environmental consequences and policy response

By D. MacDonald, J. Crabtree, G. Wiesinger, T. Dax, N. Stamou, P. Fleury, Juan Gutierrez Lazpita, A. Gibon. 2000

2,019 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Global and Planetary Change, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5e34fcb13eb9e237451da86292388fd9bf0b7099

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Citations in the corpus

Challenges in using land use and land cover data for global change studies (2011, background): “Many authors have also reported large declines of agricultural areas in Europe’s mountain areas (MacDonald et al., 2000; Etienne et al., 2003; Tasser et al., 2007).”
Determinants of cropland abandonment at the parcel, household and village levels in mountain areas of China: A multi-level analysis (2014, background): “In European ountries, considerable land abandonment has been documented ince the start of the industrial revolution in the mid-19th century Baldock et al., 1996; Mather, 2001), and lasted for the whole 20th entury, with a significant decline in the last 30 years (Pointereau t al., 2008).”
Resilience-based perspectives to guiding high-nature-value farmland through socioeconomic change (2013, background): “Large areas have been afforested in the past, often accompanied by losses of biodiversity, landscape, and sociocultural values, as well as increasing wildfire problems (MacDonald et al. 2000).”
Cropland Abandonment in South African Smallholder Communal Lands: Land Cover Change (1950–2010) and Farmer Perceptions of Contributing Factors (2018, background): “, steep mountain slopes and marginal land: [33,34]), as well as on productive and/or accessible land [35,36].”
Effects of landscape and habitat quality on butterfly communities in pre-alpine calcareous grasslands (2012, background): “Deterioration of habitat quality, however, can occur independently, e.g. by abandonment of traditional land use in semi-natural habitats (MacDonald et al., 2000; Strijker, 2005).”
Multifunctionality of Agriculture:A Review of Definitions, Evidence and Instruments (2007, background): “On the other hand, there is also evidence that a withdrawal of agriculture has a negative impact on landscapes and agri-ecological systems (MacDonald et al., 2000).”
Sustainability of pasture-based livestock farming systems in the European Mediterranean context: Synergies and trade-offs (2011, background): “The abandonment of marginal land and the decline of traditional farming practices have generally led to undesirable environmental consequences (MacDonald et al., 2000) across Europe.”
Landscape--wildfire interactions in southern Europe: implications for landscape management. (2011, background): “…land abandonment, including the decline of pastoral activities, is the major driver of landscape changes and increased fire hazard (Table 1), mainly in mountainous areas (Acosta et al., 2005; Aranbazal et al. 2008; Falcucci et al., 2007; MacDonald et al., 2000; Papanastasis et al., 2004).”
Agricultural land abandonment and natural forest re-growth in the Swiss mountains: A spatially explicit economic analysis (2007, background): “Natural forest re-growth reflects a decline in traditional agricultural practices that can be observed worldwide (Baldock et al., 1996; Rudel et al., 2000; MacDonald et al., 2000; Müller and Zeller, 2002; DLG, 2005).”
Large‐scale bioenergy from additional harvest of forest biomass is neither sustainable nor greenhouse gas neutral (2012, background): “For example, side-effects have been documented for the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union (Macdonald et al., 2000; Stoate et al., 2001), and forest-based bioenergy production would seem to be similar.”
An estimation of the extent of cropland abandonment in mountainous regions of China (2018, background): “It often occurs in mountainous regions due to the steep slope that challenges farming (S. F. Li & Li, 2017; MacDonald et al., 2000).”
Land abandonment under rural restructuring in China explained from a cost-benefit perspective (2016, background): “Thus, land abandonment has often occurred in mountainous areas where labor losses could not easily be replaced by the use of machinery (MacDonald et al., 2000).”
Hotspots of land use change in Europe (2016, background): “On the other hand, farmland area has declined in areas less suitable for agriculture, partly due to a declining profitability of farming as well as rural emigration (MacDonald et al 2000, Navarro and Pereira 2012).”
Big game or big loss? High deer densities are threatening woody plant diversity and vegetation dynamics (2014, background): “…(Gill 1990; Porter 1994; Kuiters et al. 1996; Côté et al. 2004; Gordon et al. 2004; San Miguel et al. 2010), such as the reduction of the extensive livestock grazing and the increase of forest land (MacDonald et al. 2000; Pineda 2001; Poyatos et al. 2003; Busch 2006; Rey-Benayas et al. 2007).”
Comparing the determinants of cropland abandonment in Albania and Romania using boosted regression trees (2013, background): “, 2007; Knops and Tilman, 2000), and affects biodiversity (Cramer et al., 2008; MacDonald et al., 2000).”
Reshaping agri-environmental subsidies: From marginal farming to large-scale rewilding (2015, background): “Hence, their abandonment is perceived as a threat to biodiversity (MacDonald et al., 2000), and conservation goals in Europe are often set to match extensive farmland biotopes and early successional habitats, such as heathland and meadows (Halada et al.”