Estudio da evolución da superficie agrícola na comarca da Terra Chá a partir de fotografía aérea histórica e mapas de usos, 1956-2004

Abstract

Land abandonment has become a topical issue in Galicia: there are scientific works that confirm its existence, legal texts that mention the “continuous reduction of agricultural area”, and enough visual evidence for any attentive observer. Nevertheless, the problem is far from being quantified and spatially located, largely because the spatial detail of the available statistical sources about land use and/or land cover is insufficient to capture its great spatial complexity. This paper approaches the problem from a cartographic perspective at municipal level, taking a group of municipalities usually considered as having a dynamic agriculture, and using a 50 year time-frame. The results confirm the decrease of agricultural area at the group level, but also point out that the decrease was concentrated on only a part of municipalities while the rest of them maintained levels that were equivalent to those of 1956 or even higher. Conclusions point towards the need for the spatial planning of measures intended to fight land abandonment and its consequences, so that they are tailored to the actual distribution of the problem.