Drivers of irrigated olive grove expansion in Mediterranean landscapes and associated biodiversity impacts

作者：Rui Morgado, Paulo Flores Ribeiro, José Lima Santos, Francisco Rego, Pedro Beja, Francisco Moreira · 发表于：Landscape and Urban Planning · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1016/j.landurbplan.2022.104429 · 被引用次数：52 · 研究领域：Land Use and Ecosystem Services、Horticultural and Viticultural Research、Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management

Over the last 30 years, olive farming has experienced a fast and large-scale intensification process across its Mediterranean range, that is reshaping Mediterranean farmland landscapes with associated impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. This study aims to analyze irrigated olive grove spatial expansion patterns across a 27–year period in a region of Southern Portugal, by exploring its drivers, describing the involved land-use dynamics, and to evaluating its potential biodiversity impacts. Land cover spatio-temporal dynamics were characterized by comparing recent land cover maps 2017 with those before the intensification upsurge (1990), using a grid of sampling points across the area. To investigate the drivers of intensification, these points were characterized using 10 variables reflecting policy context, previous land use (in 1990), biophysical features, and farm structure, which were used to model land cover transitions resulting in intensive olive farming. Finally, we used a counterfactual approach to assess the impacts of the olive intensification process on biodiversity in relation to alternative land cover change pathways, using farmland birds as an indicator group. We confirmed a large-scale expansion of irrigated olive groves in the region between 1990 and 2017, from being practically absent to covering ca. 6% of the study area. This expansion was made mostly at the expenses of open rainfed annual crops (63%) and, to a lesser degree, traditional rainfed o...