# Intensity and Driving Forces of Land Abandonment in Eastern Poland
## 5 Conclusions  
Land abandonment is a significant process shaping the environment of Lublin Province. In the years 1990-2018, ca. 7% of land was excluded from agricultural use, which caused a ca. 10% increase in the area covered by forests. The dynamic of land abandonment has been decreasing in recent years.  
The processes taking place can be regarded as rational from an economic perspective because land abandonment occurs in areas of the lowest value for agricultural production (high slope angles, poor soils). It should be noted, however, that these processes result from the individual decisions taken by farmers rather than from a deliberate policy.  
The socio-economic factors influencing the intensity of the process include the intensity of the agricultural use of a particular area, the percentage of small farm holdings in relation to the total number of farm holdings, and the intensity of migration processes. At the local scale, the distance of the fields from the settlement network is also a factor. It has also been observed that the intensity of land abandonment is influenced to some extent by the absorption of Common Agricultural Policyfunds. Land abandonment is usually more intensive when the absorption of funds is more limited. However, this pattern has not been observed for all kinds of funding schemes.  
Detailed spatial analyses indicated that land abandonment usually occurs in small areas unevenly distributed across a larger territory. The intensity of this process is larger than what analyses based on small-scale data (e.g., CLC) would suggest.  
Forest cover increase resulting from land abandonment reduces the threat of soil erosion processes and local flooding, particularly in areas with greater slope angles. At the initial stage, this also contributes to increased biodiversity as well as a decrease in the number of species associated with agroenoses. On the other hand, intensive reforestation can lead to the disappearance of the traditional mosaic-like agricultural landscape.  
Poland lacks legal regulations governing the processes of discontinuing agricultural land use. What is more, this phenomenon is not monitored, and there are no data concerning its spatial diversity and temporal variation. Studies on the influence of this kind of land-use changes on biodiversity and landscape value are not comprehensive; they are usually based on single case studies. Given the scale of this phenomenon, it is necessary to conduct further studies on the intensity of land abandonment and, most of all, on its environmental and socio-economic consequences.  
Conceptualization, W.Z. and K.K.; methodology, W.Z., K.K., and B.B.-Z.; investigation, W.Z., S.K., and B.B.-Z.; writing--original draft preparation, W.Z. and B.B.-Z.; writing--review and editing, W.Z. and B.B.-Z.; visualization, W.Z. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research received no external funding.  
The authors wish to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of this paper.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.