Spatial Influence of Conservation Sites (Natura 2000) on Land Cover Changes
Résumé
This paper presents the research carried out for the spatial analysis of historic land cover changes in relation to the exact location of Natura2000 sites within the framework of the BIOPRESS project. The project has been implemented within the EC-FP5 framework to support GMES Global Moni-toring for Environment and Security'. It was the only GMES project realized under the priority theme "Land cover change in Europe. The BIOPRESS consortium consisted of eight international partners and aimed to provide the EU-user community with quantitative information on how changes in land cover and land use have affected the environment and biodiversity in Europe. Our main stakeholder was the European Environment Agency, through its Topic Centres on Biological Diversity (ETC-BD) and the Terrestrial Environment (ETC-TE). The project produced consistent and coherent sets of historical (1950 1990 2000) land cover change information in and around ca. 100 Natura-2000 sites located from the boreal to the Mediterranean, and from the Atlantic to the continental zones of Europe (http://www.creaf.uab.es/biopress/). The paper will focus on the discussion of the results obtained from analysing historic land cover changes in relation to the distance to Natura 2000 sites in order to determine the relevance of protecting precarious habitats. Results obtained already for the Netherlands point out that conservation measurements have a significant influence on the location, extent and types of land cover changes (Hazeu & Mücher, 2005).