Understanding farmland abandonment in the Polish Carpathians Natalia Kolecka a, * , Jacek Kozak a , Dominik Kaim a , Monika Dobosz a , Krzysztof Ostafin a , Katarzyna Ostapowicz a , Piotr We ˛ _ zyk b , Bronwyn Price c a Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Jagiellonian University, ul. Gronostajowa 7, 30-387 Krakow, Poland b Institute of Forest Resources Management, University of Agriculture in Krak ow, al. 29 Listopada 46, 31-425 Krak ow, Poland c WSL, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zuercherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland article info Article history: Received 30 August 2016 Received in revised form 5 September 2017 Accepted 6 September 2017 Keywords: Secondary forest succession Forest expansion Farmland abandonment Mountains Forest cover change The Polish Carpathians abstract For more than 100 years, forest cover in Europe has increased substantially due to afforestation and natural forest expansion. The latter, resulting typically from farmland abandonment and subsequent secondary forest succession, has played a major role in marginal mountain areas and possesses various highly important environmental and economic consequences. In the Polish Carpathians, farmland abandonment is a spatially dispersed, locally specific process because of small farm and land parcel sizes, and its extent in the entire region is not well known. This study aims therefore to map current farmland abandonment in the Polish Carpathians and to identify its spatial determinants. To map farmland abandonment we detected secondary forest succession on abandoned fields using Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) point clouds and topographic data in 230 sample areas (tiles) distributed throughout the Carpathian communes. To reveal the spatial determinants of current farmland abandonment, we investigated variables describing the accessibility and environmental, land cover, and socioeconomic conditions of communes, using best subset regression modelling. The results showed that 13.9% of agricultural land was abandoned and underwent secondary forest succession in recent decades. Topography (mainly slope gradients) and employment outside of agriculture were the two most important spatial determinants of farmland abandonment. Consequently, a substantial forest expansion may be observed in the coming decades throughout the Polish Carpathians if no counteractions are taken. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Forest expansion plays an important role in transforming contemporary landscapes in several countries (Meyfroidt & Lambin, 2011; Rudel et al., 2005; Sloan & Sayer, 2015). In moun- tain regions in Europe it starts typically with farmland abandon- ment followed by secondary forest succession (MacDonald et al., 2000; Price et al., 2016), reflecting a decline in traditional agricul- tural management, interlinked with environmental, economic and social aspects of agriculture. Therefore, understanding patterns and spatial determinants (Meyfroidt, 2015) of farmland abandonment is an important prerequisite for developing future agricultural pol- icies (Renwick et al., 2013; Verburg & Overmars, 2009). Spatial determinants of farmland abandonment may exhibit significant similarities to spatial determinants of increasing forest cover. For instance, the forest transition theory (Mather, 1992) attributes in- creases in forest cover to emerging employment opportunities outside agriculture, reflecting economic growth or intensified mobility of the local population (Grainger, 1995; Rudel, 1998). Combined socioeconomic processes typically result in a gradual increase in forest cover on marginal lands where agriculture is less productive (Keenleyside & Tucker, 2010; Pointereau et al., 2008). Topography, in particular slope steepness, and poor soils are often reported as most important determinants of farmland abandon- ment (Baumann et al., 2011; Gellrich, Baur, Koch, & Zimmermann, 2007; Müller, Leit~ ao, & Sikor, 2013). Remote and dispersed fields with limited accessibility often require additional effort to cultivate which may stimulate a decline or termination of agricultural ac- tivities (Müller et al., 2013; Prishchepov, Müller, Dubinin, Baumann, * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: natalia.kolecka@uj.edu.pl (N. Kolecka), jacek.kozak@uj.edu.pl (J. Kozak), dominik.kaim@uj.edu.pl (D. Kaim), monika.dobosz@uj.edu.pl (M. Dobosz), krzysztof.ostafin@uj.edu.pl (K. Ostafin), katarzyna.ostapowicz@uj. edu.pl (K. Ostapowicz), p.wezyk@ur.krakow.pl (P. We ˛ _ zyk), bronwyn.price@wsl.ch (B. Price). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Applied Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apgeog http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2017.09.002 0143-6228/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Applied Geography 88 (2017) 62e72