Climatic and socioeconomic effects on land cover changes across Europe: Does protected area designation matter?

ABSTRACT: Land cover change is a dynamic phenomenon driven by synergetic biophysical and socioeconomic effects. It involves massive transitions from natural to less natural habitats and thereby threatens ecosystems and the services they provide. To retain intact ecosystems and reduce land cover change to a minimum of natural transition processes, a dense network of protected areas has been established across Europe. However, even protected areas and in particular the zones around protected areas have been shown to undergo land cover changes. The aim of our study was to compare land cover changes in protected areas, non-protected areas, and 1 km buffer zones around protected areas and analyse their relationship to climatic and socioeconomic factors across Europe between 2000 and 2012 based on earth o

SUBMITTER: Hellwig N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6636817 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature