Drivers of land abandonment in Southern Chile and implications for landscape planning

In recent decades, land abandonment has become one of the most important trends in land use and cover change. This study identifies drivers of land abandonment in Southern Chile through a spatially explicit statistical model, based on an economic theoretical framework. A logistic regression was used to model the probability of land abandonment, observed as the land cover change from agricultural land to arboreous shrubland or native forest between 1985 and 2007. We relied on census information and land cover data from 2472 farms, which represented 86.6% of the farm population in the study area. Land cover data came from two Landsat scenes taken in 1985 (TM) and 2007 (ETM+). The results from the spatial analysis show that agricultural land covered 30 061 ha in 1985. By 2007, only 16 518 ha had persisted in agriculture, while the rest had been covered by natural vegetation. Soil quality was a significant benefit-related geophysical driver of land abandonment. Important cost related socioeconomic drivers were the distances to secondary roads, aquaculture production centers, and national parks, and the existence of farm subsidies. Significant farm structural variables were the amount of bovine heads and farm's livestock carrying capacity. Variables such as age, education, and place of residence of the farmer were not statistically significant. These results may serve as an important planning tool for land managers, by helping identify areas and farming systems with high probability of land abandonment, and furthermore explore the outcomes of some potential scenarios on the future probability of the process.

Research highlights▶ We identify the drivers of agricultural land abandonment and natural vegetation re-growth using a spatially-explicit statistical model. ▶ The spatiotemporal analysis showed that 35.1% of the agricultural land in 1985 changed to shrubland and secondary forest by 2007. ▶ Of the 2472 farms included in the analysis, 1191 exhibited net land abandonment by 2007, while 1281 did not. ▶ Abandonment was negatively related to good quality soils, the presence of farm subsidies, and the distance to secondary roads, aquaculture centers, and protected areas. ▶ In an area that exhibits rapid forest loss, land abandonment and consequent forest recovery can be a desirable process from a biodiversity conservation standpoint. ▶ Contrarily, since the area has been nominated as of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System site, traditional farming practices are threatened by land abandonment.