engleski

Influence of socioeconomic develoment on the land- use change on Croatian islands

Until the second half of the 20th century most of Croatian inhabited islands were economically oriented toward the primary economic activities, such as agriculture and fishery. Olive trees, vineyards and pastures dominated islands’ landscape. Due to significant socioeconomic changes, in the second half of the 20th century many islands faced strong depopulation and deagrarianization which led to significant land-use changes. It resulted in decrease of the share of agricultural areas, increase of the areas with natural vegetation, such as macquis, and finally it led to disappearance of some landscape patterns. The paper analyzes social, demographic and land-use change on several inhabited Croatian islands in the period from 1850s to the present day. Archive data, cadastre maps from 19th century and present land-use data were used during the research. Results showed that agricultural areas on the islands are rapidly decreasing mostly in areas remote from the settlements. Some landscape patterns, such as vineyards on terraces, plough-fields and pastures completely disappeared, especially on the small islands.

Croatian islands; land-use change; landscape patterns

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