Characteristics and drivers of forest cover change in the post-socialist era in Croatia: evidence from a mixed-methods approach

© 2016, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Extensive forests in Croatia represent an important biological and economic resource in Europe. They are characterised by heterogeneity in forest management practices dating back to the socialist planned economy of the pre-1991 era. In this study we investigated the difference in rates of deforestation and reforestation in private- and state-owned forests during the post-socialist period and the causal drivers of change. The selected region of Northern Croatia is characterised by a high percentage of privately owned forests with minimal national monitoring and control. We used a mixed-methods approach which combines remote sensing, statistical modelling and a household-based questionnaire survey to assess the rates of forest cover change and factors influencing those changes. The results show that predominantly privately owned forests in Northern Croatia have recorded a net forest loss of 1.8 % during the 1991–2011 period, while Croatia overall is characterised by a 10 % forest cover increase in predominantly state-owned forests. Main factors influencing forest cover changes in private forests are slope, altitude, education structure, population age and population density. The results also show that the deforestation in private forests is weakening overall, mostly due to the continuation of the de-agrarisation and de-ruralisation processes which began during socialism

Drivers of grassland loss in Hungary during the post-socialist transformation (1987–1999)

The increase in the speed of land-cover change experienced worldwide is becoming a growing concern. Major socio-economic transitions, such as the breakdown of socialism in Europe, may lead to particularly high rates of landscape transformations. In this paper we examined the loss of semi-natural grasslands in Hungary between 1987 and 1999. We studied the relationship between 9 potential driving forces and the fate of grasslands using logistic GLMs. Grassland loss was found to be very high (1.31 % per year), which is far higher than either before or after this period. The most influential predictors of grassland loss were environmental and landscape characteristics (soil type, area of remnant grassland patches), and the socio-economic context (distance to paved road, and nearest settlement, human population density). Several processes and relationships can only be understood from a historical perspective (e.g. large extent of afforestation, strong decrease of soil water table). Grassland loss during the study period emerged as a consequence of survival strategies of individual farmers seeking adaptation to the changing environmental and socio-economic conditions, and not urbanization and agricultural intensification which are the main underlying drivers for the ongoing landscape transformations in most parts of the developed world. Though globalization increasingly influences local land use decisions , reconstructing and modelling recent landscape changes cannot be done without a proper understanding of local history and culture. Our analysis shows the importance of large-area yet high resolution landscape change research, which may reveal unexpected patterns of land cover change, undetected at coarser scales