Abandoned crop fields in the Prades Mountains (Tarragona, Spain). of Prades (Tarragona, Spain)
Keywords:
Rural landscape, rural agriculture, geographic information systemsAbstract
In the last decades traditional agriculture has changed. The move of population from the country to the city has supposed the reduction in the number of farmers and the appearance of areas of abandoned land in the landscape. Once cultivation of crops has stopped, the abandoned fields tends to be recolonized by natural vegetation or to be affected by erosion processes. The aim of these work is analyze the abandoned land in the central part of the Mountains of Prades (Tarragona, Spain) implementing a Geographical Information System (GIS). The area studied consists of five municipalities with an extension of 120.52 km2. We tried to understand the pattern of development and the present state, mapping the abandoned fields in the period 1956-1983, determining the physical factors that have had the greatest influence on the process and establishing the fields typology.
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References
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