Premium
Agricultural terrace abandonment in the alpujarra, andalucia, spain
Author(s) -
Douglas T. D.,
Kirkby S. J.,
Critchley R. W.,
Park G. J.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
land degradation and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.403
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1099-145X
pISSN - 1085-3278
DOI - 10.1002/ldr.3400050405
Subject(s) - geography , terrace (agriculture) , abandonment (legal) , land cover , land use , arable land , agriculture , population , forestry , agricultural land , irrigation , agroforestry , archaeology , environmental science , ecology , sociology , political science , law , biology , demography
The environmental impact of recent changes in land use is assessed in a part of Andalucia, southern Spain, where the deintensification and abandonment of low productivity upland areas is taking place. In the uplands of the Alpujarra, the traditional landscape most at risk is that of the irrigated cultivation terraces. These have often been established centuries ago and rely on water abstracted from streams draining the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada. The causes of this deintensification include labour shortages, with many Alpujarra municipios reporting population decreases of up to 50 per cent since 1950. Landsat Thematic Mapper digital data from May and August 1992 have been used to identify the various land cover components of the Alpujarra. Ground verification undertaken in September 1992 and April 1993 has confirmed that deintensification of terraced areas around the villages of Trevélez (at 1500m, the highest village in Spain) and Pórtugos (1300 m) can be identified as either grassland or matorral. It is recognized that many classes of land cover are mosaics with several elements at a subpixel scale (e.g. terrace risers with fruit trees). However, the output from image processing has allowed areal estimates of the main land covers representing deintensification within the terraced zone. The pattern of deintensification of terraced land is fairly complex. It can be assumed that all terraces were irrigated and cropped at some stage. Land which is no longer cropped is usually grazed and the invasion of matorral species is common, particularly when irrigation ceases. Unirrigated tree crops and vines are sometimes planted on terraces no longer used for cropping. A model of deintensification of farming on terraced land in the Alpujarra is presented.