Abstract
During recent decades in European Mediterranean Countries the shift from traditional to modem agricultural systems, favoured by national and common agricultural policies, has led in many cases to the overexploitation and degradation of natural resources. This is particularly true for Sardinia, where the growing demand for sheep cheese has caused the cultivation of unsuitable areas for forage production.
This paper evaluates the effects of past agricultural policies on current land degradation phenomena. With this aim in view, land cover changes were monitored in a test area subjected to severe anthropic pressure, located in central-eastern Sardinia.
Multi-temporal land cover maps were derived from the interpretation of aerial photographs and compared by using GIS techniques. Land cover dynamics in the period 1955–1996 highlighted that the shift from extensive to semi-extensive production systems caused deep changes in the landscape: in particular, a severe decrease in forest land, mainly due to the creation of artificial pastures, was observed. By matching the presence of artificial pastures and suitability classes derived from a previously developed model for the evaluation of Land Suitability, different degrees of environmental sensitivity to land degradation were highlighted.
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D’angelo, M., Enne, G., Madrau, S., Zucca, C. (2001). Land Cover Changes in Sardinia (Italy): The Role of Agricultural Policies in Land Degradation. In: Conacher, A.J. (eds) Land Degradation. The GeoJournal Library, vol 58. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2033-5_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2033-5_8
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