Analysis of Farmland Abandonment and the Extent and Location of Agricultural Areas that are Actually Abandoned or are in Risk to be Abandoned

Farmland abandonment (FLA) can be defined as the cessation of agricultural activities on a given surface of land and not taken by another activity (such as urbanisation or afforestation). This process attracts the attention of policy-makers both at national and EU level, in particular within the context of the Rural Development Policy. And, considering its importance in environmental and socio-economic terms, it is necessary to better understand the geographic distribution and strength of farmland abandonment trends in the EU-27, and to develop indicators to identify the most important farmland abandonment tendencies. The first aim of this study was to establish the state of the art concerning farmland abandonment (definition, type) and methodologies for identifying/quantifying this phenomenon (dataset, period of analysis, scale). Then, it was about contributing to a new definition of Less Favoured Areas by assessing the driving forces of farmland abandonment and preparing the guidelines for agri-environmental indicator Nr 14 [COM2006 (508final)] by evaluating the state and risk of farmland abandonment. The proposed methodology was based on two main elements: the variation of the UAA and the definition of rural areas. After identifying clear definitions for each variable, the way to consider the main flows of land use changes was studied. Due to a lack of accurate data at the appropriate scale, farmland afforestation could not be separated from the flow of FLA and the flow from farmland to sealed soil was estimated based on the hypothesis that it was mainly located in urban areas where the population density is high or increases very fast. The methodology was tested in three of the main agricultural countries in the EU-27 in terms of surface (France, Spain and Poland). Then, five regions were chosen to cover different contexts where a high level of FLA was observed and interviews of experts and stakeholders completed the study. Based on the results on the main causes of FLA, indicators of risk were proposed and recommendations were formulated to improve the methodology and datasets.JRC.H.5-Rural, water and ecosystem resource

Concentration of heavy metals in the agricultural soils of the Lublin Region and Poland

The paper characterises total concentrations of Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn in the surface layers (0-20 cm) of agricultural soils in Poland (48620 soils samples) and Lublin region (3829 soil samples). The results for Lublin region are expressed in terms of the degree of metal pollution as compared to contamination in the rest of the country. The average concentration of Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn (in mg kg-1 of soil) in the A horizon of agricultural soils in Poland and in Lublin region (values in parenthesis) are as follows: 0.21 (0.17); 6.5 (4.9); 6.2 (6.6); 13.6 (10.7); 32.4 (23.3). About 79% of the agricultural soils in Poland are characterised by a natural (0°) content of heavy metals while 17.6% contain elevated level (10) of these metals. In the Lublin region it is 91.9% and 6.7%, respectively. About 3% of the Polish soils (1.4% in the Lublin region) exhibit various degrees of contamination with heavy metals. This includes heavy (IV0) and very heavy pollution (V0) which is found in up to 0.4% of the agricultural land and up to 0.2% in the Lublin region

Numerical agricultural soil map of Poland at the scale of 1:500 000

In Poland, soil cover has been identified in detail in terms of spatial variability which resulted in soil records that comprise data on soil properties put in order according to the criteria of administrative and physiographic division. These data were not available in the numerical format till quite recently which meant that their application did not fully meet present requirements of agriculture, environment and landscape conservation, modification of functions, etc. The newly created numerical soil map at the scale of 1.500 000 corrects this difficulty. The main information content of the map at the scale of 1:500 000 covers complexes of soil usefulness and soil types and subtypes. Basic characteristics such as granulometric composition, origin of the parent rock and land use attributes, i.e.: forest, grassland, arable land, waters or barren land, are also included. Apart from the soil coverage, the map contains 13 topographic coverages