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I. Duarte & F.C. Rego 2010. Land use changes in Portugal between 1990 and 2005
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Land use changes in Portugal between 1990 and 2005
Inês Duarte 1,2* & Francisco Castro Rego 2
1 Centro de Investigação em Ciências do Ambiente e Empresariais, INUAF, Convento
Espírito Santo, 8100-641 Loulé, Portugal
2 Centro de Ecologia Aplicada Prof. Baeta Neves, Tapada da Ajuda, 1300 Lisboa,
Portugal
Abstract
In the last decades, changes occurred in all Mediterranean territory. Social and economical
trends changed and the related land use accompanied this alteration. We used different
Portuguese cartography (1990 and 2005), made them comparable and identified the changes on
the territory. Despites all the incentives for forestation in the last decades, results showed that
shrublands advanced on the territory. Eucalyptus forests and irrigated agriculture increased too
with less significance. The general trends verified were for shrublands increase and lost of
traditional uses.
Keywords: Portugal, Land use changes, Land use types, Forests, Agriculture, Shrublands,
Oaks, Transition
1. Introduction
The landscape is a reflection of the aims of the society. Neolithic man began changing the
landscape through the invention of agriculture (Pasquale et al, 2004). In XIX century he made
long railways and enlarged constructed surfaces. Portugal, like all Mediterranean countries,
have a landscape with centuries of history from intervention, cutting, grazing, fire, and the
socio-economical trends always were related with agriculture, forestry and livestock (Duarte et
al, 2009; Acácio, 2009; Lloret, 2003). The traditional land use has last for centuries, or
millennia, but recently major changes have been occurring (Paqualle et al, 2004). Many
agricultural lands were abandoned, due to migration of people to urban areas in search of better
socio-economic conditions. The silvicultural practices, related with the traditional economie, as
also decreased largely. Grazing became negligible. All these events determined the increase in
shrubland areas and forest cover, continue, reducing the fragmentation of the landscape
(Paqualle et al, 2004; Hill et al, 2004; Regato-Pajares et al, 2004).
In the first half of the XX century, in Portugal, the agriculture expands with the campaign of
wheat (Duarte et al, 2009). Then, in the second half of the century, the forests take a lot of his
place and shrublands increased because of the abandonment of the land (Ferreira el al, 2004).
More recently, agricultural land increased again with the irrigation possibilities and
diversification of productions (Pinto Correia et al, 2006; Ferreira et al, 2004). But forests still
the more representative land use types (Ferreira et al, 2004).
There has been some studies about changes in land use in the Portuguese territory (Ferreira at
all, 2004; Pinto Correia et al, 2006) that shows this occurrences in the portuguese context.
* Corresponding author. Tel.:+351 961 947 466 - Fax:+351 289 420 478
Email address: inesmarquesduarte@gmail.com
Forest Landscapes and Global Change-New Frontiers in Management, Conservation and Restoration. Proceedings of the IUFRO Landscape Ecology
Working Group International Conference, September 21-27, 2010, Bragança, Portugal. J.C. Azevedo, M. Feliciano, J. Castro & M.A. Pinto (eds.)
2010, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Bragança, Portugal.