In most EU Member States, agricultural land area is expected to decrease in coming years due to land abandonment (alongside other factors such as urban expansion). A better understanding of the extent and location of abandoned land is needed to estimate local effects and adapt policy to suit. This study presents a method to anticipate the occurrence of
agricultural abandonment, using a spatial model to project land-use changes for the EU and UK.

SCIENCE FOR ENVIRONMENT POLICY
‘Abandoned’ land is defined as land previously used to grow crops or for grazing, but that no longer has farming functions and has not been converted for another use. Agricultural abandonment has been a significant land-use change process in Europe for many decades. While primarily driven by low land productivity and degradation, often in remote and mountainous regions, the phenomenon has also reflected political and societal change (for instance, post-Soviet rural depopulation).

Abandonment can have both negative and positive consequences; while it may cause landscape homogenisation, soil degradation and biodiversity loss, to name a few impacts, in places with favourable climate and soil conditions it can also allow soils to stabilise, improve carbon sequestration and regulate water flow when natural ecological succession occurs.

The trade-offs between positive and negative impacts are largely site-specific, and depend upon the location and its biophysical, cultural, environmental, political and socio-economic conditions.
In past decades, research has aimed to map, quantify and assess the major impacts and drivers of land abandonment processes — but less attention has been paid to modelling estimates of future abandonment locations and extent. This study seeks to fill this gap, and presents a method to model future local agricultural abandonment as a result of economic decisions on the use of land.
The researchers implement an integrative, spatially dynamic land-use modelling framework via the LUISA Territorial Modelling Platform, a model that simulates population, land-use and accessibility changes across the EU and UK in order to assess local and cross-policy externalities and present alternative scenarios of territorial development. Future land-use trends and major...read further from the link above

By 2030, agricultural land is projected to be facing differing levels of abandonment risk in the EU and UK, with 11.4% at either high or very high risk. Agricultural land decreases in extent over the same period, and is projected to be abandoned at an average rate of 373 000 hectares per year, reaching roughly 5.6 million hectares — or 3.6% of total agricultural land — by 2030.
Arable land is most prone to abandonment, accounting for more than 70% of this total. Almost one-quarter of all abandonment will likely occur in mountainous areas where arable land would be the most affected agriculture system (as opposed to permanent crops or pastures).
These areas are dispersed across Europe and across risk factors; biophysical factors are a leading driver in mountainous regions, for instance, while climate limitations lead in droughtprone areas. Overall, Spain and Poland are likely to endure the most abandonment in both absolute and relative terms, with Spain alone losing more than 1 million hectares from 2015– 2030 — about 20% of projected losses. Spain, Poland, France, Germany and Italy form the
leading group of land losses, altogether responsible for more than 70% of total abandonment.
Abandonment share is not equally spread across EU countries, ranging from less than 2% to more than 50% at the regional level.
The researchers validate their model by comparing their projections to observed spatial distributions of abandoned land, and suggest there is acceptable accuracy. They note that their risk-factor map would benefit from higher-resolution and more recent data, and statistics that drill down to the farm-specific level. They suggest that their model and results can help policymakers identify hotspots of abandonment risk, to prevent or minimise present and future negative consequences

European Commission DG Environment News Alert
Service, edited bySCU, The University of the West of England, Bristol.
Source:
Perpiña Castillo, C., JacobsCrisioni, C., Diogo, V., and Lavalle, C. (2021) Modelling agricultural land abandonment in a fine spatial resolution multi-level land-use model: An application for the EU. Environmental Modelling & Software,
136: 104946.
Contact:
Carolina Perpiña Castillo,
carolina.perpina [at] ec.europa.eu (carolina[dot]perpina[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu);
Carlo Lavalle,
carlo.lavalle [at] ec.europa.eu (carlo[dot]lavalle[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)