Changing landscapes in Northeastern Europe based on examples from the Baltic countries

Abstract

The landscapes of Europe are the result of thousands of years of human impact. As a product of human intervention in natural processes they have always been changing. The processes of changes in agricultural land use have led, and still lead, to a change in both the biotic and abiotic conditions of the landscape at local, regional and European level. The share of agricultural land is increasing from Estonia towards Lithuania. In the same time, the share of forested areas, wetlands and water bodies is decreasing from north to south. The main trends in landscape changes in the Baltic countries during the last decade are abandonment of agricultural lands, omitting land amelioration and increasing clear-cutting in forests. Farm management as usually practiced in marginal areas has maintained nature-conservation value. However, marginal areas are also affected by agricultural change. As farm units are generally smaller in marginal areas and economic rationalization is constrained by both physical and biological factors, the social and ecological effects of agricultural change are more profound, in scalar and temporal aspects, here than in more productive regions. There is a large excess of agricultural land in all three Baltic countries and more widely, overall in Northeastern Europe. It means that there is no real need for it from an economic point of view. Possibilities to handle this problem are development of formerly drained areas into wetlands or multifunctional development of landscapes. The DPSIR approach can be used to handle complex problems and especially in environmental management, particularly in the abandonment problems in the Baltic countries.