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. 2014 Jul;39:366–375. doi: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2014.01.015

Land system change in Italy from 1884 to 2007: Analysing the North–South divergence on the basis of an integrated indicator framework☆

Maria Niedertscheider 1,⁎, Karlheinz Erb 1
PMCID: PMC4375606  PMID: 25844007

Highlights

  • •

    Land use intensification led to declining HANPP levels, while harvest increased.

  • •

    Land system change was strikingly similar in the Italian North and South.

  • •

    Levels of land use efficiency differed but trends were similar.

Keywords: Long-term land system change, Italy, HANPP, Socio-ecological perspective, Land use intensification

Abstract

Over the past centuries, land systems in Italy experienced fundamental shifts, owing to the availability of new energy forms, population surges, and technological progress. The 20th century was characterized by massive productivity increases, accompanied by gradual land abandonment and the return of forest land. We here analyze 120 years of land system change in Italy, applying the human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) framework, a metric for socio-economic pressures on terrestrial ecosystems. HANPP allows integrating ecological with societal perspectives, by systematically quantifying (a) biomass harvest and (b) the difference between potential productivity of ecosystems and current productivity induced by land use processes, such as land conversion, or land degradation. Besides assessing national trends we calculated HANPP separately for the Italian North and South between 1934 and 2007, in order to scrutinize if high regional discrepancies in terms of natural and socio-economic preconditions translate into diverging land system trajectories. Our results show that national HANPP has been declining from 78% of natural productivity before WWII to 56% in 2007, indicating a declining land -use induced pressure on biomass flows over time. Simultaneously, biomass harvest increased by around 26% due to agricultural intensification, despite shrinking croplands. Although we found a significant difference between the Northern and Southern region in the absolute levels of several land use indicators related to biomass appropriation, the overarching trends of land system change were remarkably similar in both regions. This suggests that underlying drivers of land system change, such as policies aimed at land-use intensification and structural change were equally dominating land system trajectories in the North and South of Italy, not withstanding their socio-ecological divergences.

Introduction

Land use provides essential resources to society and at the same time is one of the most central factors for accelerating global environmental change, which increasingly jeopardizes human well-being (Foley et al., 2005). This dilemma of land use is expected to intensify in the coming decades, owing to accelerating biomass demand of a rising and prospering world population (Nonhebel & Kastner, 2011; Kastner et al., 2012; Bruinsma, 2003). This calls for in depth analysis of the trade-offs between societal gains and ecological costs related to land use (Turner et al., 1977; Tilman, 1999; Foley et al., 2005; Lambin & Geist, 2006; Galloway et al., 2008). Satisfying increasing biomass demand while concurrently avoiding potential environmental pitfalls requires interdisciplinary understanding of the complex society-nature interactions that lead to specific land use patterns and their dynamics over time (Rindfuss et al., 2004; GLP, 2005; Turner et al., 2007).

Large knowledge gaps persist on how socio-economic processes (economic growth, political shifts, demographic change) and natural constraints and endowments (e.g. water availability, climate, soils) co-determine trajectories of land system change. Analysing how land systems have reacted to changing underlying drivers in the past has been highlighted as key to tackle these knowledge gaps and as a precondition for preparing for future land system changes (Dearing et al., 2010). Long-term case studies have proven a powerful approach for scrutinizing the general principles of land system change (Krausmann et al., 2013, 2012; Singh et al., 2013; DeFries et al., 2004), particularly in terms of analysing effects of rapid change and megatrends such as urbanization or the increasing relevance of telecouplings in the land system (Hostert et al., 2011; Seto et al., 2012; Meyfroidt et al., 2013). Historic studies on land use change are rare though, mainly due to a lack of data sets on land system dynamics and their underlying drivers (Singh et al., 2013).

We here present a long time series analysis of land system change in the Republic of Italy, employing the analytical framework “human appropriation of net primary production” (HANPP; Haberl et al., 2007; Erb et al., 2009a,b). This framework allows to comprehensively assess changes in land systems (Vitousek et al., 1997; Haberl et al., 2007; Erb et al., 2009a,b; Niedertscheider et al., 2012), by discerning changes in the extent of land-use types, which is often associated with land cover change, and changes in the intensity of land use (Lambin & Meyfroidt, 2010; Erb et al., 2013; Kuemmerle et al., 2013).

HANPP quantifies socio-economic biomass flows, e.g. agricultural harvest, and relates these flows consistently to ecological biomass flows, i.e. net primary production (NPP). NPP is defined as the biomass produced annually through photosynthesis. It represents the trophic basis of almost all living organisms on earth and thus is a key parameter of ecosystem functioning (Roy et al., 2001). A central feature of HANPP is its ability to refer directly either to human consumption patterns, or to the impacts of land use on natural systems, allowing to put land use change in a socio-economic (e.g. resource economic; Alvarenga et al., 2013), as well as an ecological perspective (e.g. land use impacts on biodiversity, Dullinger et al., 2013; Haberl et al., 2007).

The Republic of Italy is an interesting country for quantifying changes in biomass flows related to changing socio-economic determinants due to its unique history of repeated major political and economic shifts, encompassing a major energy transition, a shift from democracy to fascism, two world wars and the accession to the European Union. While until far into the 20th century the level of industrialization was low to moderate compared to northern European countries, Italy became one of the leading industrial players after WWII (Malanima, 2006a,b), entailing rapid industrialization and economic growth. Thus after 1950 the role of agriculture changed completely (Malanima & Zamagni, 2010) along with structural change of the economy, technological advancement, market integration and the accession to the European Union, all of which are likely to have affected land system trajectories at different scales. Data availability allowed assessing land system changes for the Republic of Italy between 1884 and 2007.

A second interesting aspect about Italy as a study example is its pronounced North/South gradient in terms of biophysical and socio-economic conditions, which are expected to have affected land systems differently in the North compared to the South. Natural preconditions are more favourable for biomass production in the North, while the South is prone to lower annual precipitation rates (701 mm/year in the North versus 453 mm in the South in 2011, ISTAT, 2012), high temperature peaks in the summer, and dry-land degradation (Zika & Erb, 2009). In addition land use was determined by entirely different socio-economic frameworks in both regions until far into the 20th century. Historically northern land use tended to be more dominated by market driven decisions of individual family farmers who aimed at optimizing economic returns of their lands, whereas in the South land tenure rights were more restrictive particularly until WWII, with a substantial share of the population being employed as day labourers on large land holdings which were cultivated under low land use intensity (Rossi-Doria, 1958; Dunnage, 2002; Del Monte & Pennacchio, 2011). As a consequence high North/South discrepancies in terms of the level of industrialization, structural change of agriculture and economic performance prevailed over the past decades and indeed have been persisting until today (Daniele & Malanima, 2007; ISTAT, 2013). Data availability allowed for separate HANPP and land system change calculation for North and South Italy between 1934 and 2007. In this period an ongoing process of concentration of biomass production away from marginal and poorer regions into the most fertile areas, best suited for productivity increases, has been witnessed across many European regions (MacDonald et al., 2000). To our knowledge no study has so far analyzed if these processes are also reflected in the regional land use trajectories in Italy, e.g. leading to a gradual shift of harvest and HANPP from the South into the North, accompanied by a trend towards land abandonment in the South and land use intensification and production increases in the North.

Hence the overarching goals of this study are twofold: (1) We aim to analyze land system dynamics after 1884 in a consistent time-series approach and to put these trajectories in relation to long term socio-economic change, such as industrialization, market integration, and energy transition in order to scrutinize the role of these drivers in a long term perspective. (2) We will test the hypothesis if the high natural and socio-economic discrepancies between the Italian North and South led to different land system trajectories since 1934. From this analysis we expect insights into the role of climatic and socio-economic determinants for dynamics and patterns of land use in Italy.

Materials and methods

The period studied reaches from 1884 to 2007 for the entire Italian territory and is determined by the availability of land use and agricultural harvest statistics. Italian borders have changed slightly during this period, in particular after World War I (WWI) and World War II (WWII). However, in terms of the total territory, these changes were minor and were thus ignored. Between 1934 and 2007, data availability allowed analyzing land system trajectories separately for the Italian North and South. The South consists of eight provinces (Basilicata, Campania, Calabria, Puglia, Abruzzo, Molise, Sicily and Sardinia) and is often referred to as “Mezzogiorno”.

Our analysis of Italian HANPP trajectories is based on a wide range of datasets, which are shortly described below. A detailed description of the materials and methods is further provided in the Supplementary Online Material (SI).

We follow the definition of HANPP by Haberl et al. (2007) as the sum of productivity losses due to land use and land cover change (HANPPluc) and biomass harvest (HANPPharv; Fig. 1). High HANPP levels entail lower shares of NPPeco, i.e. the share of biomass remaining in ecosystems after human land use, which is available for other food webs. Thus high HANPP indicates high pressure on ecosystems caused by human land use. NPPact refers to the current, e.g. “human managed” levels of productivity and consists of harvested NPP (HANPPharv) and remaining productivity (NPPeco).

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

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Definition of HANPP. HANPP is defined as the sum of land use induced NPP changes (HANPPluc) and human harvest (HANPPharv).

The ratio of HANPPharv to HANPP is denoted as HANPP efficency; this metric illustrates the efficiency to which societies gain biomass resources out of their HANPP levels. High levels of HANPP efficiency imply that large fractions of the appropriated productivty directly enter the socio-economic system in the form of biomass harvest, and that smaller fractions are foregone in the course of land use. HANPP efficiency thus does not capture the level of HANPP or HANPPharv as such, but rather demonstrates the composition of HANPP.

HANPP as percentage of NPPpot represents an indicator of the degree of human dominition of ecosystems in terms of energy flows (Erb et al., 2009a,b). Low levels imply that high fractions of the natural productivty are left in ecosystems after harvest, and that the degree of human disturbance from a HANPP perspective is generally low. HANPP per person (HANPP/cap/year) relates biomass appropriation to population numbers.

The HANPP calculation for Italy is based on the following five datasets:

  • 1.

    A consistent land use/-land cover data set: Data for the main land use classes (i.e. forest land, grassland, annual cropland and permanent cropland) were derived from Italian national statistics (MAIC, 1885–1914; ISTAT, 1935–2008; ISTAT, 2013) and supplemented with model assumptions if data was lacking or insufficient (refer to SI text). For recent time periods, forest land in the statistics was much lower than values given in the remote-sensing derived product CORINE (EEA, 2006), an indication that secondary forests and other woodland has been under-reported by the statistics (Piussi & Pettenella, 2000). In order to apply to the forest cover extent reported in CORINE 2006 (EEA, 2006) we modelled secondary succession of forest land by assuming that a share of 37% of the declining agricultural areas from 1965 onwards (e.g. the year in which agricultural areas started to decline permanently) was forest land after 20 years. This share of “secondary forest land” was added to the statistical data on forest land. The category “other land” was introduced in order to account for land which was not reported by the national statistics. It was calculated as the remainder of total territory and all other land classes. A comparison with CORINE data revealed that “other land” includes a mixture of various land categories which are not reported in the national statistics, e.g. “heterogeneous agricultural land”, “shrublands” and “emerging forest land”. For annual croplands CORINE reported higher values than the national statistics in the year 2006 (84 000 vs. 70 000 km2). However, we believe that in terms of cultivated land national statistics are reliable and offer a consistent data basis over the entire time period observed.

  • 2.

    Data on biomass harvest (HANPPharv) was taken from the national statistics (MAIC, 1885–1914; ISTAT, 1935–2008; ISTAT, 2013) and from the literature (e.g. for fuelwood consumption see Malanima, 2006a,b). Biomass harvest comprises harvest on all land use/-cover types, including secondary harvest (e.g. crop residues, used and un-used). Data for grazing, not available in the statistics, was derived by applying a grazing gap approach after Krausmann et al. (2008). Grazed biomass is calculated as the difference between annual feed demand of all livestock species (calculated from livestock numbers and animal specific feed demand values, refer to the SI) and annual feed supply reported in the statistics (e.g. fodder crops and market feed) and from model assumptions (e.g. crop residues used as animal fodder, refer to the SI).

  • 3.

    Actual productivity (NPPact) for the individual land use/-cover types was assessed by mixed approaches. For forest land, actual productivity equaled potential productivity (NPPpot, Haberl et al., 2007). For cropland, NPPact was extrapolated from HANPPharv by considering harvest and pre-harvest losses (i.e. losses during plant growth; (Krausmann et al., 2008). On settlement areas NPPact was approximated as 1/3 of NPPpot, assuming that one third of the surface bears vegetation with potential productivity (due to the intensive management of green areas in e.g. cities), while two thirds were considered as sealed and thus with no vegetation (Haberl et al., 2007). NPPact on grasslands was assumed to be 80% of NPPpot, taking NPP reductions related to the conversion of forests to open pastures into account (Haberl et al., 2007). In the South NPPact was further diminished by the effects of human induced degradation on dry lands, assuming the intermediate value for NPP losses for Italy given in Zika and Erb (2009, refer to the SI text).

  • 4.

    Data for potential productivity (NPPpot) were provided by the LPJ-GDVM (Sitch et al., 2003) on an annual basis, and separately for the Italian North and South between 1934 and 2007. Before 1900 the mean of the NPPpot values of 1900–1910 was extrapolated backwards. For assessing the aboveground compartment of total NPP, we assumed a factor of 60% (Roy et al., 2001).

  • 5.
    For the North-South analysis between 1934 and 2007 we quantified and compared regional trajectories of several indicator sets:
    • (a)
      HANPP indicators refer to HANPP as percentage of the potential NPP, HANPP per person, and actual productivity per land area (NPPact/m2/year).
      Land use intensification is measured via the levels of input and output indicators:
    • (b)
      As output indicators we use HANPPharv per land area, HANPPharv on cropland and livestock numbers per unit of grazing land, which is used as a proxy for the intensification and industrialization of the animal production system.
    • (c)
      As input indicators we use Nitrogen consumption per cropland area, tractor density on cropland and agricultural workforce as share of the total population.
    • (d)
      A fourth group of indicators was introduced to measure the input/output efficiency of these indicators: HANPP efficiency (e.g. share of HANPPharv to total HANPP), Nitrogen use productivity, i.e. the ratio of HANPPharv per Nitrogen input, and agricultural labour productivity, i.e. the amount of HANPPharv per unit of agricultural workforce. Data on Nitrogen use, tractor numbers and population figures were taken from the national statistics (MAIC, 1885–1914; ISTAT, 1935–2008; ISTAT, 2013).

Results

National land system trajectories

Fig. 2 shows the trajectory of land system change in Italy between 1884 and 2007. In terms of land use/-cover (Fig. 2a), two contrasting trends can be observed: Whereas the period before WWII was characterized by an expansion of cropland, mostly at the expense of grazing land, after WWII, agricultural areas decreased considerably, allowing for the regrowth of forests (increase from 18% to 26% between 1884 and 2007). Settlement areas increased along with population rise, contributing a share of less than 5% to the territory over time. Unused areas amounted around 5% to total territory extent. The reduction of agricultural areas was also compensated by an increase in other land (increase from 17 to 24% between 1884 and 2007).

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

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Italian land system change from 1884 to 2007: (a) land cover/-use change (percentage to total territory extent), (b) HANPPharv, break down to land cover classes, (c) HANPP totals, break down toe land cover classes and HANPP per person (sec. axis), (d) aggregated NPP flows (HANPPluc = NPP changes due to land use change, HANPPharv = harvested NPP, NPPeco = remaining NPP) and HANPP as percentage of NPPpot (solid line, sec. axis) and HANPP efficiency (harvested NPP as percentage of HANPP, dashed line, sec. axis).

HANPPharv (Fig. 2b) increased constantly from 1884 to the late 1990 and declined afterwards on the entire Italian territory, mainly dominated by the trajectories of cropland, that showed steady increases of HANPPharv despite the shrinking areas (Fig. 2a): HANPPharv more than doubled, ranging from 14 million tonnes carbon in 1884 to around 28 Mio tonnes in 2007, exhibiting constantly increasing trends in-between. HANPPharv on grassland rose from 11.2 to 13.4 Mio tC in 1990 and declined to a level of around 6.2 Mio tC between 1990 and 2007. HANPPharv on permanent cropland and on settlement areas played a minor role, increasing steadily from 1884 to 2007 (increase by 62% and 178%, respectively). HANPPharv on forest land was dominated by the extraction of fuelwood (not shown here) and more or less stagnated over the observed time span.

Italian HANPP trends reveal the significance of agricultural land (the sum of cropland and grazing land) as the dominating drivers of the aggregated trends (Fig. 2c). Overall HANPP levels increased from 66 Mio tC/year in 1884 to 75 Mio tC/year in 1938, and started to gradually decline again in the 1960s, with its most rapid decline experienced from the mid-1980s onwards, reaching its lowest levels of 55 Mio tC in 2005. While annual cropland and grazing land still contributed around 53% and 24%, to total HANPP in 1938, the shares decreased to 39% and 17%, respectively, by 2007. This decrease was largely compensated by HANPP on permanent croplands and forest land. HANPP on forest land remained constant over the entire time period, fluctuating around a level of 7 Mio tC/year. HANPP on settlement areas and on ‘other land’ contributed only minor shares to the overall HANPP trajectories. HANPP per person and year (dotted line, secondary axis) decreased significantly from a value of 2.3 tC/cap/year in 1884 to 0.9 tC/cap in 2007, as a result of population growth and declining HANPP.

Aggregated NPP flows (Fig. 3d) reveal the increasing significance of HANPPharv at cost of decreasing levels of productivity losses (HANPPluc) over the investigated time span. While in 1884 HANPPluc contributed a high share of 35% to total NPP flows in Italy, it contributed the lowest share of all categories (10%) to overall NPP flows by 2007. In turn the share of HANPPharv increased from 36% to 44% of the Italian biomass flows in the same time period, reaching its highest levels of nearly 55 Mio tC in 1969 and again in 1989. NPPeco, remained at a constant level of around 29 Mio tC/year until the turn of the last century, when levels started to decrease until WWI, followed by an increase again in the inter-war period. After WWII NPPeco increased quickly from a level of 21% of total NPP flows in 1938 to 45% in 2007 (or a level of 46 Mio tC). The initial increase of HANPP as percentage of NPPpot (Fig. 2d, solid line, secondary axis) from 71% of NPPpot in 1884 to 80% in 1929, was followed by a constant level until the mid 1960s, after which it decreased again, reaching its lowest level of 53% in 2005. HANPPharv as percentage of HANPP (e.g. HANPP efficiency; Fig. 2d, stacked line, secondary axis) increased almost constantly from 51% in 1884 to its maximum level of 87% in 2005, showing phases of decrease in the pre-WWII years and from 1984 to 1994.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

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(a and b) Land use/-cover change for all land categories in the Italian North and South as percentage of total territory area from 1934 to 2007.

North vs. South, indicators of HANPP

Fig. 3 depicts the sub-national land-use trajectories, of land use/-cover change (Fig. 3a and b) and aggregated NPP flows (Fig. 3c and d) from 1934 to 2007. In both regions cropland declined by around 50% and grazing land declined by around 45%. Permanent cropland showed contrasting trends in the two regions, increasing in the North and slightly declining in the South. However, permanent cropland contributed a minor share of 7% to total territory in the North and a higher share of 12% to the Southern region in 2007. Settlement areas rose somewhat parallel to the population rise, however also settlement areas contributed a minor share of around 5% to the Northern and Southern territory. ‘Other land’ covered around 20% of the Northern territory and even 24% of the Southern territory in 2007.

HANPP indicators depicted in Fig. 4 show striking similarities between the two regions with regard to land-use change, in particular to annual change rates, despite difference in absolute levels (see also Fig. 3, SI). HANPP as % of potential productivity (NPPpot, Fig. 4a) declined from around 75% around WWII in both regions to 58% in 2007 in the South and to 52% in the North. The highest levels were witnessed in 1950 in both regions (77% in the North, 79% in the South). HANPP per person and year was at similar levels in both regions until the mid1990s (Fig. 4b), decreasing from 1.7 tC/cap/year in the pre-WWII period to 1.1 tC/cap/year in 2007 in the South and to 0.9 tC/cap/year in the North. Actual NPP per m2 and year (Fig. 4c) increased by 65% from 1934 to 2007 in the South and by 34% in the North. However, NPPact remained at a level of nearly 1/3 higher (average between 1934 and 2007) in the North than in the South.

Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

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Indicators of land system change in the Italian North and South from 1934 to 2007. HANPP indicators: (a) HANPP as percentage of NPPpot, (b) HANPP per person, (c) NPPact per m2 and year. Indicators of input intensity: d) HANPPharv per m2 of land, (e) cropland HANPPharv per m2 of cropland (HANPPharv/m2/year), (f) livestock density (number of animals per km2 of grazing land). Indicators of output intensity: (g) Nitrogen use per m2 of cropland (kg nutrients applied per unit of cropland), (h) tractor density on cropland (numbers of tractors per unit of cropland), (i) agricultural workers as percentage of the total population. Efficiency indicators: (j) HANPPharv as percentage of HANPP (HANPP efficiency), (k) Nitrogen productivity (HANPPharv per kg Nitrogen input), (l) agricultural labour productivity (HANPPharv per agricultural worker).

HANPPharv per m2 (Fig. 4d) increased constantly from 1934 to the late 1970s in both regions, followed by a slowdown of the trend and a decline from the late 1980s onwards, with very similar annual change rates, but at different absolute levels. The decline was less pronounced in the South, where the level was also lower (by around 46% on average) over the entire time period observed. HANPPharv per m2 of cropland increased drastically, more than doubling in both regions from 1934 to 2007, exhibiting a decrease only in the North from 2005 to 2007 (Fig. 4e). The Northern level was already twice the level prevailing in the South in 1934 (163 gC/m2/year versus 91 gC/m2/year). Livestock density on grazing land (Fig. 4f) increased from a similar level of 400 animals per km2 to a level of 610 animals/km2 in 2007 in the South and to 830 animals/km2 in the North.

Similarities are also found in the trajectories of input intensity. Nitrogen use per cropland area (Fig. 4g) rose 7.9-fold in the Italian North and 6.6-fold in the Italian South between 1934 and 2007. Levels peaked in 1989 in both regions, followed by a sharp decline afterwards. Tractor density increased almost 30-fold from 1961 to 2005 in both regions, with the North remaining at higher levels throughout time (Fig. 4h). Agricultural workforce declined from around 20% of the population in the pre-WWII period in the Italian North and South to 2.2% in 2007 in the South and 1.2% in the South (Fig. 4i). After WWII the decline was much faster in the North, e.g. in 1970 12% of the population were employed in agriculture in the South, compared to 6% in the North.

Integrated intensity indicators confirm this high level of agreement in land system trajectories. HANNP efficiency (100 × HANPPharv/HANPP) increased from 63% in 1934 to 90% in 2007 in the North, while it increased from 48% to 67% in the South (Fig. 4j). Nitrogen use productivity, was almost identical in both regions after WW II and decreased constantly until the early 1980s and remained somewhat constant afterwards (Fig. 4k). Agricultural labour productivity (Fig. 4l) started at a similar level in both regions in 1934, but increased faster until 2007 in the North (11-fold increase) than in the South (8-fold increase).

Discussion

Long term land system trajectories, 1884–2007

From 1884 to 2007 Italy's socio-economic system underwent major shifts, which had fundamental repercussions on the land system. Until WWII agricultural growth in terms of economic output was low (Federico & Malanima, 2004), although it still played a central role in the economy (Malanima & Zamagni, 2010). A rapid industrial transition and fast economic growth started only after WWII, allowing for massive surges in agricultural productivity within a few years, accompanied with a concentration of land use on the most productive areas (Falcucci et al., 2006). Abandonment of cultivated land was in particular pronounced in the mountainous regions (Falcucci et al., 2006), leading to a forest transition (Mather, 2001) and declining HANPP levels until the end of the observed period. In the period before WWII, HANPP was stagnating at around 80% of NPPpot, surpassed the 80% between 1955 and 1970, and declined to a level below 60% in 2007. HANPP in Italy is thus at or above the HANPP level in many other industrialized countries, e.g. the UK, Spain, Hungary, or the Czech Republic (Krausmann et al., 2001; Kohlheb & Krausmann, 2009; Schwarzlmuller, 2009; Musel, 2009; Vačkář & Orlitová, 2011; refer also to Krausmann et al., 2012). Italian HANPP was chiefly dominated by the trajectories on cropland throughout time, and to a somewhat lesser extent by HANPP on grazing land. Yield increases on cropland allowed for a decoupling of levels of HANPPharv and cropland extent. Due to returning forests on abandoned croplands, HANPPluc increased, which translated into declining HANPP levels particularly after WWII. In per capita terms, HANPP showed a steep decline by a factor 2 from 1884 to 2007. Simultaneously HANPP efficiency increased (rising HANPPharv per unit of HANPP), while croplands contracted and HANPPharv increased. Thus land system change in Italy followed the typical trend of industrialization of the land-use system in overall terms (Krausmann et al., 2012).

By 1884 the Italian energy system was still primarily based on biomass as the main supplier of energy and labour (Malanima, 2006a,b; Gales et al., 2007). Rural poverty was high and natural resources (e.g. coal) including land for biomass production were chronically scarce. Concurrently outputs per land area, e.g. cereal yields, were generally below European average (Baade, 1952; Malanima, 2011), highlighting the low level of agricultural intensification, e.g. in terms of Nitrogen use compared to other European regions, which were already in the middle of industrial transition (Baade, 1952). Agriculture was still primarily subsistence based, (except for wheat production, see Federico, 2007a,b) and market integration was generally low, particularly in the Southern provinces. This is reflected in the low levels of HANPP efficiency until 1890 (Fig. 2d, dashed line), which is a result of low yields and large productivity losses (HANPPluc). This changed to some degree in the period preceding WWI, when HANPP efficiency started to increase, fuelled by surging actual productivity on cultivated land.

The fascist period, from 1922 until WWII, was marked by the paradigm of agricultural self-sufficiency (Schmidt, 1936). Land policies promoted land reclamation programmes, milestones were e.g. the drainage of the Pontine marshes (Kish, 1966; Schmidt, 1937). However, according to the aggregate national picture cropland extent remained at a constant level in these years and contrary to what was desired by the fascist regime HANPPharv increased only minor. Likewise HANPP as percentage of NPPpot remained at a constant level in this period and HANPP efficiency even slightly declined, indicating no major advancements in agricultural technology, which otherwise would have led to increasing HANPP efficiency as a result of rising yields.

The land systems changed drastically after WWII, following pathways of rising land use intensity. In the 1950s and 1960s Italy's economy underwent a rapid transition towards a fossil based energy system (Malanima, 2006a,b) and gradually became one of the leading industrial players in Europe. As a consequence the role of agriculture changed fundamentally in these years. By 1970 the share of Italians employed in agriculture had shrunk from 60% in 1884 to 17% of the total work force (Daniele & Malanima, 2009) and the agricultural share to total GDP has shrunk to less than 10% (ISTAT, 2013). Thus economic performance as well as energy supply were no longer depending on land use performance. Simultaneously access to artificial fertilizers and agricultural machinery was improving drastically in the post-war years (Fig. 4g and h), allowing for surging agricultural yields (Fig. 4e). Thus actual productivity on annual cropland increased at fast pace, as a result of increasing land use intensification. Surges in nitrogen inputs were even more drastic than increases of cropland harvest, leading to declining levels of Nitrogen productivity between 1950 and 2007 (Fig. 4k).

In turn agriculture on remote and mountainous land became less profitable, gradually leading to abandonment of agriculture and to a polarization of biomass production (Guidi & Piussi, 1993; Alberti et al., 2011; MacDonald et al., 2000; Caraveli, 2000). This led to a declining HANPP trend and increasing HANPP efficiency, which started in the mid-1960s and continued until the end of the period.

The decline of agricultural areas after WWII was particularly pronounced in Italy, because Italy holds a substantial share of mountainous land, which made adoption of new technologies (e.g. heavy machinery) difficult. Structural economic change increased the availability of more profitable income sources than agriculture provided, emphasizing urbanization (Malanima, 2005) and further land abandonment. In turn this allowed for re-growing forest land particularly from the 1960s onwards (Piussi & Pettenella, 2000) and indeed the Italian forest transition was rather rapid in terms of area expansion and growing forest stock, also compared to other European countries (see Kauppi et al., 2006).

These trends continued to dominate land system trajectories until the mid-1980s, when growth of HANPPharv in absolute terms and per m2 of land started to stagnate, and the increase in HANPP efficiency came to a halt. Particularly pronounced are reductions in the amount of grazed biomass, which is attributed to declining animal stocks and intensification of the livestock system (also refer to Fig. 4f), characterized by an increasing importance of market feed as a source of animal fodder and growing independency from grasslands. EU-policies, which were formerly production based, and thus favoured a shift towards high intensity farming started to promote more extensive forms of agriculture by the late 1980s and particularly in the early 1990s (Caraveli, 2000). However, actual productivity per land unit in overall terms continued to rise as a result of further expansion of forests, characterized by high NPPact values, on abandoned land (Fig. 3a and b), and increasing yields on croplands, particularly in the North (Fig. 4e).

These improvements in terms of HANPP, however, cannot be straightforwardly interpreted as a development towards more sustainable land systems from a global perspective. HANPP accounts only focus on developments on a defined territory unit, but do not allow to depict trajectories in resource use of a population. Analyzing Italian net biomass trade (Fig. 1, SI) reveals that declining levels of HANPP from 1884 to 2007 have been offset by imports: Net imports of biomass increased more than 10-fold from 1934 to 2007, illustrating that land use impacts were increasingly externalized to other world regions. This is a much faster growth than the increase in population numbers, which increased 1.5-fold in the same time period (ISTAT, 2013).

North/South land system trajectories

The analysis of land system change in the North and South of Italy revealed striking similarities between the regional pictures. Most prominently, HANPP trajectories, either in relation to natural productivity or to population growth (Fig. 4a and b), are remarkably similar, both in level and trend. HANPP in both regions declined from around 80% to a value of somewhat below 60% of NPPpot from 1934 to 2007. This indicates that, despite all the differences in natural endowment and socio-economic performance, a similar pressure on ecosystems is exerted by land use in both regions. Additionally, this pressure was decoupled at an almost identical pace from population growth in each region.

Also the general pattern of land use/-cover change is similar for the North and South of Italy, most notably encompassing a concentration of agriculture on the most fertile areas over time, in favour of forest re-growth. Biomass production was rising in both regions, as well as NPPact per m2 and HANPP efficiency (Fig. 4c, j, d and e). Likewise both regions were marked by slight decreases of HANPPharv per m2 by the late 1980s, indicating similar responses to a shift in EU-land policies, which started to subsidize set aside programmes and more extensive forms of agriculture in these years. This is also reflected in declining growth rates of Nitrogen inputs (Fig. 4g).

Although the trends in overall patterns of land system change were similar, absolute and relative levels of several indicators differed between both regions. In the North, volumes of HANPPharv were much larger (116 gC/m2 compared to 98 gC/m2/year in the South in 2007), and productivity losses as the second part of HANPP were smaller over the entire time period considered. Here NPPact levels even surpassed their natural potential (NPPpot) on annual croplands from the late 1980s onwards, as it is indicated by negative values of HANPPluc (not shown here), while Southern NPPact remained well below its natural potential. Level differences of NPPact in the Italian North and South can be attributed to the combined effects of contrasting biophysical conditions and effects of socio-economic legacies. Over the previous decades and centuries both regions developed distinct ways of land use for biomass production. Although a mix of different land- and agricultural systems co-existed in both regions at various times, the Southern biomass production system was characterized by very high rural poverty (and still is, see Bertolini et al., 2008), lacking agricultural investment, and restrictive land tenure rights (e.g. high share of landless day labourers) far into the second half of the 20th century. This led to the emergence of extensive, low input forms of agriculture over large parts in the South, while the share of highly productive areas (olive, fruit and wine cultivation), was restricted mainly to some coastal zones (Rossi-Doria, 1958; Dunnage, 2002; Del Monte & Pennacchio, 2011).

In the North, land tenure rights improved in the 19th century and agriculture became more closely connected to industry which granted access to capital inputs such as Nitrogen and machinery. This led to a tendency towards a more intensive and more profitable biomass production system than it was the case in the South (Dunnage, 2002; Del Monte & Pennacchio, 2011). Particularly the Po valley has been one of the most advanced agricultural regions in Europe already in the 19th century. Here large scale land reclamation schemes and irrigation systems have been introduced much earlier than in the Southern regions (Schmidt, 1937).

In Southern Italy, large land holders did not follow this intensification trend, and relied much more on a traditional workforce organization, which may partly explain the level differences of some HANPP indicators. Even after WWII, when Southern agro-economic development was made a national issue (an example is the foundation of the national programme “cassa per il Mezzogiorno”, aimed primarily at financing public construction works, and promoting economic investment) and land tenure rights were completely reformed in the course of a major land reform (Rother et al., 2000), the economic gap has been described to even have widened (Felice, 2009; Daniele & Malanima, 2007). This is also supported by the results of HANPPharv on cropland and agricultural labour productivity after WWII, revealing faster acceleration of the trends in the North (Fig. 4e, i and l).

There are many views of why the North performed better in terms of (agro-) economic productivity than the South. One view is that climate, soils and topography made investment into the land more risky in the South, where land owners had to deal with hot growing seasons, repeating drought events and harvest failures (Petruscewitz cited in Federico, 2007a,b). Basically, the South faces a larger precipitation deficit than the North which is mirrored both in the LPJ-model outputs (NPPpot was 25% lower in the South than in the North, refer to Fig. 2, SI) and actual productivity. In addition, human induced soil degradation is a problem particularly for the South (Salvati & Zitti, 2009; Montanarella, 2007; Rendell, 1986).

Differences in biophysical conditions also influence decisions on plant species grown and cropping techniques applied, which might explain the differences in the level of many HANPP variables (NPPact/m2, HANPPharv/m2, cropland HANPPharv/m2 and HANPP efficiency) to some extent. For instance, permanent cropland in the South contributed a higher share to total land cover than in the North. Permanent cropland, as a relatively extensive form of agriculture, naturally exhibits lower levels of HANPPharv per unit of land. Still permanent cropland can be highly profitable in monetary terms, and these examples also existed in the South (Rossi Doria cited in Federico, 2007a,b).

Nevertheless, the bio-climatically disadvantageous situation of the South did not lead to a reduced HANPP per capita compared to the North. Interestingly North/South disparities in land use trends seem to play out particularly on the socio-economic dimension of HANPP. Namely NPPact as well as HANPPharv per land area and HANPP efficiency (HANPPharv as % of HANPP) (Fig. 4 c, d, e and j) were at higher levels in the North throughout the entire time period observed (despite revealing similar trends). However, high levels of fertilizer and machinery use were necessary in the North to achieve such high productivity levels (Fig. 4g and h), whereas levels of external inputs were lower in the South. This implies that environmental pressures related to high land use intensity, which are not quantified in the HANPP framework (e.g. air-, groundwater and soil pollution), are probably more severe in the North.

On the other hand almost no differences remain when the difference in potential productivity are taken into account. HANPP expressed in percent of NPPpot is nearly identical in both regions, indicating a very similar degree of human disturbance or level of land use related pressures on ecosystems. The same was true for other land system parameters, such as HANPP per capita, or Nitrogen use productivity, which indicates that one unit of HANPPharv consumed similar amounts of Nitrogen (Fig. 4c, d, e and j).

Our study revealed that, contrary to what we have expected, the differences in socio-economic frameworks and natural preconditions for land use did not translate into major differences in the land system trajectories. Given the wide-spread notion of a low productive and backward Italian South in contrast to a highly productive Italian North, similarities in the overall patterns of land system change observed in this study were rather surprising. This is particularly true in the light of previous findings at the national scale, for instance Spain (Schwarzlmuller, 2009) and Great Britain (Musel, 2009; see Krausmann et al., 2012) where considerable differences in terms of the levels of HANPP % NPPpot between Northern and Southern countries are found. This indicates that, related to the development of land use over time, the common history of political developments and land use policies were apparently strong enough to compensate for the regional differences and particularities between the North and South.

Conclusions

Industrialization and intensification of land use were the common determinants of land use change in Italy, with gradually decreasing significance of biomass production for the overall economic performance being at the heart of the post WWII land use trends. The similarity in trends and – to a lesser degree – also in levels between Italian's North and South suggests that strong drivers of land system change must have been overruling the harsh differences in biophysical and socio-economic framework conditions between the two regions. The intensification of land use was a “mega-driver” of land system change in both regions: increasing levels of fertilizer use and machinery employment, lead to similar trends towards land abandonment and forest transition. In addition, the structural economic change, which led to a decreasing significance of land-based production in terms of economic performance and growth, was overruling any regional socio-economic as well as biophysical particularity. This megatrend was prevailing in both regions at a surprising similarity.

Further analyses of the interplay between socio-economic and natural determinants of land system change are required to scrutinize the underlying mechanisms and dominant processes characterizing this megatrend. The HANPP perspective on the case of Italy illustrates that caveats are warranted towards oversimplified hypotheses on mechanisms and determinants of land-system trajectories. Integrated, consistent and comprehensive frameworks are required to deepen our understanding of the complexities related to trajectories of land use change, in order to provide the knowledge base for future, more sustainable land systems.

Acknowledgements

Funding from ERC-2010-stg 263522 LUISE and from EU-FP7 265104 VOLANTE as well as by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), project P20812-G11 is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks go to Tim Beringer for providing LPJ-DGVM results. The research contributes to the Global Land Project (http://www.globallandproject.org).

Footnotes

☆

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Appendix A. Supplementary data

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