Impact of Transhumant Livestock Grazing Abandonment on Pseudo-Alpine Grasslands in Greece in the Context of Climatic Change

Anna Sidiropoulou, Dimitrios Chouvardas, Konstantinos Mantzanas, Stefanos Stefanidis and Maria Karatassiou ()
Additional contact information
Anna Sidiropoulou: Laboratory of Rangeland Ecology, School of Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 286, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Dimitrios Chouvardas: Laboratory of Rangeland Ecology, School of Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 286, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Konstantinos Mantzanas: Laboratory of Rangeland Ecology, School of Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 286, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Stefanos Stefanidis: Laboratory of Mountainous Water Management and Control, School of Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 268, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Maria Karatassiou: Laboratory of Rangeland Ecology, School of Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 286, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 12, 1-18

Abstract: Pseudo-alpine grassland ecosystems have started to decline during the past few decades. According to many studies, climate change and abandonment of traditional anthropogenic activities are directly linked to this phenomenon. However, the interaction of these two factors with pseudo-alpine grasslands has not been studied in Greece. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of climatic change and abandonment of transhumant livestock grazing on pseudo-alpine grassland ecosystems structure and stability in Mt Vermio and Mt Zireia. Geographic Information System data on land use/land cover from 1945 and 2020, as well as climatological and livestock data, have been examined and presented. Landscape metrics were also used to quantify landscape structure changes. Although both mountains’ pseudo-alpine grasslands have reduced in size, Mt Zireia has experienced an upward treeline shift, which seems to be the result of climate change, while in Mt Vermio, the more severe transhumance abandonment caused horizontal tree expansion. There are strong indications that a rise in temperature is the main driver for the upward increase in treeline.

Keywords: Mt Zireia; Mt Vermio; landscape metrics; treeline shift; temperature; grazing; GIS; land use/land cover change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/12/2126/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/12/2126/ (text/html)

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:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:12:p:2126-:d:984256

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().