Long-term Population Dynamics and Land-use Transitions in a Mediterranean Country: a Data Mining Approach

This study investigates long-term population dynamics (1862-2009) in the light of forest transition theory with the aim to verify the temporal coherence of demographic and landuse transformations at the country scale in Italy. An exploratory analysis of socioenvironmental indicators is proposed using principal component analysis and hierarchical clustering. Results of the analysis identify four time intervals (1862-1891, 1892-1930, 1931-1976, 1977-2009) with homogeneous characteristics in both population and land-use attributes. These time intervals represent conditions of dynamic equilibrium between the environment and the local socioeconomic context, and highlight latent transitions in both population and land-use variables.