Recent Insular Mediterranean Landscape Evolution: A Case Study on Syros, Greece

Recent changes in the Mediterranean landscape has been triggered by changes in human activities. The first aim of this study is to identify socio-economic factors that brought about land cover change and the way the environmental characteristics of the area defined the trajectory or the lack of change and its spatio-temporal pattern. The second aim is to test whether the landscape is becoming more homogenous due to this process. The study was based on land cover maps of the area of Galissas on Syros, Greece covering the period between 1945 and 1998. The direction and the timing of change (or the lack of it) was related to rural depopulation, the emergence of greenhouse cultivation and tourism growth, and the geology and topography of each site. The underlying environmental heterogeneity has largely retained the land cover heterogeneity by mediating the processes of change.