Fieldwork approach to determining the extent of agricultural land abandonment – case study

Agricultural land abandonment is an elusive phenomenon, as yet not fully defined. Even though it is common in Polish landscape, there are no measures to date that could quantify the phenomenon. Neither the data from the Central Statistical Office, nor the data from land registers include information on land abandonment. Therefore, there is a need for a systematic approach that could quantify and determine the extent of land abandonment. A fieldwork approach was designed for the purpose, and research was conducted on a test area of Okocim village in Małopolska region. Vegetation cover that could indicate the existence of land abandonment on the agricultural areas – such as trees, brushwood, and grass cover – was examined using a representative sample of 145 test fields. The fieldwork approach revealed that the extent of land abandonment in the test area is 37% of all areas officially classified as agricultural, which shows that the scale of the phenomenon is significant, and that there is a need to develop an approach to provide a more detailed picture of the distribution of land abandonment.