Mediterranean desertification and land degradation: Mapping related land use change syndromes based on satellite observations

In past decades, the European Mediterranean has undergone widespread land use transformations. These are largely driven by changes of socio-economic conditions, such as accession to the European Community, and had strong effects on the way the land is being used. Aiming at a systematic description of such change processes on a global level, the syndrome concept was proposed to describe archetypical, co-evolutionary patterns of human–nature interactions, and has been specifically linked to the desertification issue. In this study, we present an adaptation of the syndrome approach to the Iberian Peninsula. We suggest a data processing and interpretation framework to map the spatial extent of specific syndromes. The mapping approach is based on the time series analysis of satellite data. We have characterized vegetation dynamics using NDVI estimates from the coarse scale, hyper-temporal 1-km MEDOKADS archive, which is based on calibrated NOAA–AVHRR images. Results indicate that local patches of abrupt disturbance, mainly caused by fire, are contrasted by a widespread increase in vegetation, which is in large parts attributed to the abandonment of rural areas. Although this questions the dominance of classical desertification traits, i.e. decline of productivity after disturbance, it is concluded that the recent greening presents a different sort of environmental risk, as it may negatively impact on fire regimes and the hydrological cycle