BACKGROUND Rapid global change is creating fundamental challenges for the persistence
of natural ecosystems and their biodiversity. Conservation efforts aimed at the protection of …

Land abandonment is a process widespread in many regions of the world as a
consequence of socio-economic conditions and changes on the use of land. Research has …

Summary The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the guiding policy for agriculture and the
largest single budget item in the European Union (EU). Agriculture is essential to meet the …

Despite substantial focus on sustainability issues in both science and politics, humanity
remains on largely unsustainable development trajectories. Partly, this is due to the failure of …

Calls for humanity to 'reconnect to nature'have grown increasingly louder from both scholars
and civil society. Yet, there is relatively little coherence about what reconnecting to nature …

Agricultural land abandonment and its impacts on landscape features have been a striking
characteristic of many European rural areas over the last decades. Although previous …

Sustainable food production is one of the major challenges of the twenty-first century in the
era of global environmental problems such as climate change, increasing population and …

Farmland abandonment is a widespread land-use change in temperate regions, due to
increasing yields on productive lands, conservation policies, and the increasing imports of …

Cultural ecosystem services constitute a growing field of research that is characterized by an
increasing number of publications from various academic disciplines. We conducted a …

Since the 1950s, noteworthy farmland abandonment has been occurring in many developed
countries and some developing countries. This global land use phenomenon has …