Mapping opportunities and challenges for rewilding in Europe.

ABSTRACT: Farmland abandonment takes place across the world due to socio-economic and ecological drivers. In Europe agricultural and environmental policies aim to prevent abandonment and halt ecological succession. Ecological rewilding has been recently proposed as an alternative strategy. We developed a framework to assess opportunities for rewilding across different dimensions of wilderness in Europe. We mapped artificial light, human accessibility based on transport infrastructure, proportion of harvested primary productivity (i.e., ecosystem productivity appropriated by humans through agriculture or forestry), and deviation from potential natural vegetation in areas projected to be abandoned by 2040. At the continental level, the levels of artificial light were low and the deviation from potenti

SUBMITTER: Ceausu S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4584510 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature