Land dynamic within a European Union bread basket: The case of Southern Romania

Abstract

Since the collapse of the socialist world in 1989-1991, Eastern Europe has undergone a series of significant changes driven by natural and socio-economic causes. Both types of drivers can strongly influence changes in land use and land cover. Southern Romania has been greatly affected by climatic and environmental changes. Despite hosting the biggest city in Romania, the region is primarily rural and important for crop production within the entire European Union. Changes over the past 30 years have affected crop patterns, land fragmentation, land abandonment as well as degradation in soil and ecosystem quality as a result of a changing climate. Here, we examine these changes using satellite imagery, remote-sensing derived products, national statistics, and climate data. Our results show that the first phase of the post-socialist transition strongly impacted southern Romania by significantly increasing land fragmentation, reducing the variety of crops and, especially, irrigated ones, declining crop production, collapse of land improvement practices etc. After joining the EU in 2007, socio-economic variables started to improve despite regional and global crises. On the other hand, the regional effects of environmental change, such as increasing air temperature and increasing frequency and severity of droughts, raised significant challenges to agricultural production in southern Romania. Structural changes grounded on nature-based solutions such as changes in land-use patterns, planting forest belts around agricultural fields, introducing new drought-resistant crops, and change in land management by using best practices from more arid regions are required to mitigate the negative consequences of the changing climate.