Hotspots of land use change in Europe

Assessing changes in the extent and management intensity of land use is crucial to understanding-system dynamics and their environmental and social outcomes. Yet, changes in the spatial of land management intensity, and thus how they might relate to changes in the extent of land, remains unclear for many world regions. Wecompiled and analyzed high-resolution, spatiallyexplicit-use change indicators capturing changes in both the extent and management intensity of, grazing land, forests, and urban areas for all of Europe for the period 1990–2006. Based on indicators, we identified hotspots of change and explored the spatial concordance of area versus changes. Wefound a clear East–West divide with regard to agriculture, with stronger declines and lower management intensity in the East compared to the West. Yet, these were not uniform and diverging patterns of intensification in areas highly suitable for, and disintensification and cropland contraction in more marginal areas emerged. Despite moderate overall rates of change, many regions in Europe fell into at least one land-use change during 1990–2006, often related to a spatial reorganization of land use (i. e. , co-occurring area and intensification or co-occurring area increase and disintensification). Our analyses the diverse spatial patterns and heterogeneity of land-use changes in Europe, and the of jointly considering changes in the extent and management intensity of land use, as well feedbacks among land-use sectors. Given this spatial differentiation of land-use change, and thus its impacts, spatially-explicit assessments of land-use dynamics are important for-specific, regionalized land-use policy making.