#8194. Depopulation impacts on ecosystem services in Mediterranean rural areas

October 2026publication date
Proposal available till 08-06-2025
4 total number of authors per manuscript0 $

The title of the journal is available only for the authors who have already paid for
Journal’s subject area:
Geography, Planning and Development;
Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous);
Nature and Landscape Conservation;
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law;
Ecology;
Global and Planetary Change;
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Abstract:
Despite the exponential increase in human population at global scale, some rural areas have experienced a progressive abandonment over the last decades. Under particular socioecological and policy contexts, changes in demography may promote land-use changes and, consequently, alter ecosystem services (ES) supply. However, most studies on this topic have targeted urban population increase, whereas depopulation has been rarely addressed. Here, we examined how shifts in demographic variables (human population, population density, and number of villages) affect provisioning (water supply, food and biomass production) and regulating (soil retention, water and nutrient regulation) ES in Mediterranean rural areas with contrasting environmental, socioeconomic and land-use contexts. When depopulation results in underuse of socio-ecological systems, we expected a decrease of provisioning and an increase of regulating ES, whereas we expected the opposite pattern when it results in land-use intensification.
Keywords:
Agricultural intensification; Demographic changes; Environmental management; Land-use change; Rewilding; Rural abandonment

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