Abstract
Landscape change is one of the most important anthropogenic processes affecting ecosystems. Historically, there have been several far-reaching transformations of Eastern and Northern European ecosystems due to agricultural transitions. The most recent one, due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, resulted in large-scale changes in rural landscapes of Eastern Europe. In many countries, over 20% of agricultural land was abandoned. The trend is especially strong in Estonia, where 54% of arable land was abandoned between 1992 and 2005. Land abandonment can affect a variety of ecosystem traits such as biodiversity, water supply , nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration. The outcome depends on the type of land abandoned and the management following abandonment. This chapter looks at its varied implications for environmental governance.
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Lehtilä, K., Dinnetz, P. (2017). Environmental Impacts of Rural Landscape Change During the Post-Communist Period in the Baltic Sea Region. In: Bali Swain, R. (eds) Environmental Challenges in the Baltic Region. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56007-6_7
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