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Factors of land abandonment in mountainous Mediterranean areas: the case of Montenegrin settlements

Land use changes have been investigated in the surroundings of 14 rural Montenegrin settlements in order to get specific information about trends in land abandonment since around 1950. Permanently, seasonally and less inhabited settlements with different geographic conditions were studied. This was...

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Autores principales: Kerckhof, Annelies, Spalevic, Velibor, Van Eetvelde, Veerle, Nyssen, Jan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4837754/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27218000
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-016-2079-7
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author Kerckhof, Annelies
Spalevic, Velibor
Van Eetvelde, Veerle
Nyssen, Jan
author_facet Kerckhof, Annelies
Spalevic, Velibor
Van Eetvelde, Veerle
Nyssen, Jan
author_sort Kerckhof, Annelies
collection PubMed
description Land use changes have been investigated in the surroundings of 14 rural Montenegrin settlements in order to get specific information about trends in land abandonment since around 1950. Permanently, seasonally and less inhabited settlements with different geographic conditions were studied. This was done by interviewing local inhabitants, which enabled a holistic approach to reveal the underlying processes of land abandonment. According to the observed patterns of land use change, the study sites can be categorized into intensified, urbanized, extensified, overgrown and forested cases. The category of extensified settlements is characterized by a highly reduced agricultural management intensity, resulting in an increase in grasslands and fruit trees at the expense of cropland. This land use change is mainly related to emigrating and aging inhabitants, having less livestock. Such extensive land use is found in both permanently inhabited and abandoned villages. Only some studied settlements became largely overgrown by bushes and forest. The steep average slope gradients and a large distance to the nearest city are explanatory factors of such land abandonment. Land use intensification takes place in low-lying areas located nearby towns.
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spelling pubmed-48377542016-05-23 Factors of land abandonment in mountainous Mediterranean areas: the case of Montenegrin settlements Kerckhof, Annelies Spalevic, Velibor Van Eetvelde, Veerle Nyssen, Jan Springerplus Research Land use changes have been investigated in the surroundings of 14 rural Montenegrin settlements in order to get specific information about trends in land abandonment since around 1950. Permanently, seasonally and less inhabited settlements with different geographic conditions were studied. This was done by interviewing local inhabitants, which enabled a holistic approach to reveal the underlying processes of land abandonment. According to the observed patterns of land use change, the study sites can be categorized into intensified, urbanized, extensified, overgrown and forested cases. The category of extensified settlements is characterized by a highly reduced agricultural management intensity, resulting in an increase in grasslands and fruit trees at the expense of cropland. This land use change is mainly related to emigrating and aging inhabitants, having less livestock. Such extensive land use is found in both permanently inhabited and abandoned villages. Only some studied settlements became largely overgrown by bushes and forest. The steep average slope gradients and a large distance to the nearest city are explanatory factors of such land abandonment. Land use intensification takes place in low-lying areas located nearby towns. Springer International Publishing 2016-04-19 /pmc/articles/PMC4837754/ /pubmed/27218000 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-016-2079-7 Text en © Kerckhof et al. 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Research
Kerckhof, Annelies
Spalevic, Velibor
Van Eetvelde, Veerle
Nyssen, Jan
Factors of land abandonment in mountainous Mediterranean areas: the case of Montenegrin settlements
title Factors of land abandonment in mountainous Mediterranean areas: the case of Montenegrin settlements
title_full Factors of land abandonment in mountainous Mediterranean areas: the case of Montenegrin settlements
title_fullStr Factors of land abandonment in mountainous Mediterranean areas: the case of Montenegrin settlements
title_full_unstemmed Factors of land abandonment in mountainous Mediterranean areas: the case of Montenegrin settlements
title_short Factors of land abandonment in mountainous Mediterranean areas: the case of Montenegrin settlements
title_sort factors of land abandonment in mountainous mediterranean areas: the case of montenegrin settlements
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4837754/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27218000
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-016-2079-7
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