Modelling agricultural land abandonment in a fine spatial resolution multi-level land-use model: an application for the EU

In the majority of EU countries, agricultural land is expected to decrease not only due to land-use changes in favour of urban expansion and afforestation but also to land abandonment processes. The knowledge on location and extent of agricultural land abandonment is relevant for estimating local external effects and adapting policy interventions. Currently, multi-level land-use models to capture determined processes of demand-driven redevelopment. However, land abandonment is much more difficult to capture because of its more ambiguous definition and the lack of data on its spatial distribution. This paper presents a method to explicitly model agricultural abandonment as a choice of disinvestment, which in turn is embedded in a utility-based land-use modelling framework that projects land-use changes for the EU. Validation exercises using observed spatial distribution of abandoned farmland show that the proposed method allows to model abandonment with acceptable accuracy.

PERPIÑA CASTILLO Carolina;  JACOBS Christiaan;  DIOGO Vasco;  LAVALLE Carlo; 

2021-01-28

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC122112

1364-8152 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364815220310033?via%3Dihub,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC122112,   

10.1016/j.envsoft.2020.104946 (online),