Importance of grazing in the conservation of the traditional landscape of the merino passes in the Cantabrian mountain
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/pirineos.2022.177008Keywords:
Land cover classes, landscape diversity, transhumanceAbstract
The decrease in transhumant sheep during the last decades may have significant consequences on land cover classes and cover classes diversity in mountain areas. The influence of grazing on landscape evolution in the mountain areas traditionally used for Merino grazing in the Cantabrian Mountains (2002-2020) was investigated. For this purpose, Landsat images and a supervised classification algorithm were used to obtain the mean annual values and trends of land cover classes and the Shannon index of land cover classes in 10 sheep grazed and 10 non-grazed mountain-areas. Grassland cover was higher in sheep grazed areas, while tree, shrub, bare ground cover and diversity of land cover classes was higher in non-grazed areas. Temporal trends did not show significant changes, although sheep grazing favored grassland conservation and diversity of land cover classes. This suggests a positive relationship between sheep grazing and conservation of the traditional mosaic landscape.
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