Depopulation impacts on ecosystem services in Mediterranean rural areas

Daniel Bruno, Ricardo Sorando, Begoña Álvarez-Farizo, Clara Castellano, Vanessa Céspedes, Belinda Gallardo, Juan J. Jiménez, M. Victoria López, Rocío López-Flores, David Moret-Fernández, Enrique Navarro, Félix Picazo, Miguel Sevilla-Callejo, Jaume Tormo, Juan José Vidal-Macua, José Manuel Nicolau and Francisco A. Comín

Ecosystem Services, 2021, vol. 52, issue C

Abstract: Despite the exponential increase in human population at global scale, some rural areas have experienced a progressive abandonment over the last decades. Under particular socioecological and policy contexts, changes in demography may promote land-use changes and, consequently, alter ecosystem services (ES) supply. However, most studies on this topic have targeted urban population increase, whereas depopulation has been rarely addressed. Here, we examined how shifts in demographic variables (human population, population density, and number of villages) affect provisioning (water supply, food and biomass production) and regulating (soil retention, water and nutrient regulation) ES in Mediterranean rural areas with contrasting environmental, socioeconomic and land-use contexts. When depopulation results in underuse of socio-ecological systems, we expected a decrease of provisioning and an increase of regulating ES, whereas we expected the opposite pattern when it results in land-use intensification. To test this hypothesis, we compared demographic data and ES estimated with Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) linked to land-use changes between the 1950s and 2000s in three rural areas of Aragón (NE Spain). Generalized Additive Mixed Models and Linear Mixed-Effect Models were used to analyze demographic trends, ES changes and the relationship between them.

Keywords: Rural abandonment; Land-use change; Agricultural intensification; Rewilding; Environmental management; Demographic changes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041621001273
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoser:v:52:y:2021:i:c:s2212041621001273

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2021.101369

Access Statistics for this article

Ecosystem Services is currently edited by Leon C Braat

More articles in Ecosystem Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().