Citation: V˘ aculis , teanu, G.; Doru, S.C.; Necula, N.; Niculit , ˘ a, M.; M˘ arg˘ arint, M.C. One Century of Pasture Dynamics in a Hilly Area of Eastern Europe, as Revealed by the Land-Use Change Approach. Sustainability 2023, 15, 406. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su15010406 Academic Editors: Sharif Ahmed Mukul and Pere Serra Received: 28 October 2022 Revised: 2 December 2022 Accepted: 22 December 2022 Published: 27 December 2022 Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article One Century of Pasture Dynamics in a Hilly Area of Eastern Europe, as Revealed by the Land-Use Change Approach Georgiana Văculis , teanu 1,2 , Silviu Costel Doru 1, * , Nicus , or Necula 2, * , Mihai Niculit , ă 1 and Mihai Ciprian Mărgărint 1 1 Department of Geography, Faculty of Geography and Geology, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Ias , i, 700505 Ias , i, Romania 2 Tulnici Research Station, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Ias , i, 627365 Tulnici, Romania * Correspondence: silviudoru89@gmail.com (S.C.D.); nicusor.necula@uaic.ro (N.N.) Abstract: Land use is paramount to sustainable development, and in the past, important changes happened under the influence of various factors. Revealing these changes in a meaningful manner, not just as total statistics but also as fluxes and at a spatial level, allows us to detect and associate them with the factors involved. We show a study case in Ias , i County, Romania, using a raster approach to change detection for a land-use-type database that extends to the 1920s. The database was created from topographic, remote sensing, and field data collected between 1920 and 2006, with five intervals between 1960, 1980, 1990, and 2000, starting from CORINE Land Cover data. These periods mark the socio-political and natural changes in the study area. The change detection results are well matched with the identified drivers and their spatial distribution. The fluctuations between land-use types provide a good way to create drivers’ associations. Our analysis can be easily applied to any other concerned areas and could be used as base references for any legislative intention to determine land-use-type changes because it can be learned from past conversions with regard to failures or examples of good practice. Keywords: land use; pastures; Romania; Ias , i county 1. Introduction The current paradigm towards which modern society tends is that of sustainable development. Though its implementation is often criticized, sustainability remains an ongoing issue considering the new climate change [1] threats. The concept of sustainable development begins with the rational use of resources. Land is the most valuable resource, as it represents the support on which all human activities rely and is the source of materials which are necessary for the evolution of society. In this context, the land is seen in its physical context as the entire complexity of the physical features of the Earth’s surface, above and beyond the ground level, including vegetation and soil, but not wildlife [2]. Human use of land resources gives rise to the ‘land-use’ concept [3], which consists of all the relations between humans and the physical land seen as a resource in terms of the manipulations required for the land’s usage [4]. Depending on the purpose for which the land is used (food production, shelter provision, recreation, extraction and processing of materials, etc. [3]), the degree of anthropic modification is variable, and the land cover is more or less natural, up to the point at which we speak about human landscapes [2]. Hence, land use is inherently linked to land cover, which is considered the biophysical attribute of the Earth’s surface [5]. Land use and land cover are shaped under the influence of two broad sets of forces— human needs and environmental characteristics and processes [3]. Land-use science is born through this complex reality of land use and land-cover changes in space and time and the connections and feedback with social, economic, cultural, political, environmental, Sustainability 2023, 15, 406. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15010406 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability