Modeling the ecological niche of long-term land use changes. The role of biophysical factors

Land use/land cover changes (LULCCs) represent the result of the complex interaction between biophys-ical factors and human activity, acting over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. The aim of thiswork is to quantify the role of biophysical factors in constraining the trajectories of land abandonmentand urbanization in the last 50 years. A habitat suitability model borrowed from animal ecology was usedto analyze the ecological niche of the following LULCC trajectories occurred in Emilia-Romagna (northernItaly) during 1954–2008: (i) land abandonment (LA) and (ii) urbanization (URB), both from agriculturalareas (URB agr) and from semi-natural areas (URB for). Results showed that the different LULCC trajec-tories were driven by different combinations of biophysical factors, such as climate, topography and soilquality. In particular, slope and elevation resulted as the main driving factors for rural processes, whileslope and temperatures resulted as the main constraints underlying urban processes. This approachmay represent a conceptual and technical step toward the systematic assessment of LULCC processes,thus providing an effective support tool to inform decision makers about land use transformations, theirunderlying causes, as well as their possible implications.