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4.1.        Delineation of Broad European Agricultural Regions (BEARs)

The delineated 15 BEARs portray the diversity of agricultural land systems in Europe. While Northern Europe is mostly covered by forests, the other areas are mainly covered by BEARs of different size and character. Overall, the most abundant BEARs are ‘Low-intensity grassland and fallow farmland‘ (share: 25.3 % of FECs) and ‘Western intensive cropland‘ (17.1 %). Accordingly, ‘Northern and Highland livestock farming’ (1.0 %) and ‘Mediterranean livestock farming’ (0.8 %) are least represented (Table 2).

Table 2: The 15 BEARs ranked according to the composite agricultural multi-pressure index, including their pressure-profiles, total crop yield and spatial extents.
#FEC = number of FECs; %FECs = percentage of FECs; note that pesticide pressure levels were not assigned to the livestock-related BEARs and water abstraction pressure levels were not assigned to the BEAR ‘Extensive grassland area and fallow farmland’.

BEAR

Pressure index

Nitrogen pressure

Pesticide pressure

Agricultural land use in floodplain

Water abstraction

Total crop yield [t km-2]1

#FECs

%FECs

Area [ha]

Mediterranean intensive cropland

3.5

low

high

high

high

60.5

1,267

4.1

8,631,175

Western intensive cropland

3.0

high

high

medium

very low

78.6

5,227

17.1

39,888,953

Mediterranean large-scale permanent cropland

3.0

very low

high

medium

high

51.9

1,958

6.4

10,299,484

Western intensive livestock farming

3.0

high

-

high

very low

-

2,033

6.6

12,851,906

Eastern intensive cropland

2.8

medium

medium

high

very low

61.2

2,778

9.1

26,377,358

Mediterranean extensive cropland

2.8

very low

high

medium

medium

50.8

1,463

4.8

7,176,737

Mediterranean livestock farming

2.3

low

-

low

medium

-

244

0.8

646,847

Western extensive cropland

2.3

medium

medium

low

very low

60.0

1,880

6.1

8,385,316

Northern and Highland intensive cropland

2.3

medium

low

medium

very low

55.0

374

1.2

2,681,189

Western extensive livestock farming

3.0

medium

-

low

very low

-

1,323

4.3

6,240,752

Eastern livestock farming

2.0

low

-

medium

very low

-

553

1.8

2,037,532

Eastern extensive cropland

2.0

low

low

medium

very low

42.2

2,618

8.6

16,590,568

Northern and Highland extensive cropland

1.3

low

very low

very low

very low

40.8

816

2.7

3,799,863

Northern and Highland livestock farming

1.0

very low

-

very low

very low

-

314

1

779,044

Extensive grassland area and fallow farmland

1.0

very low

very low

very low

-

0.2

7,689

25.1

33,737,274

4.2.        Pressure-profiles

A broad range of pressure levels across the BEARs can be observed, with the ‘Mediterranean intensive cropland’ featuring overall highest pressure levels (Table 2). The BEARs in Western Europe show the highest levels of nutrient pressure, whereas the BEARs in the Mediterranean show the highest levels of pesticide and water abstraction pressure, with the latter being very low for all other BEARs. The composite multi-pressure index shows highest values for the ‘Mediterranean intensive cropland’, located in specific regions of Greece, Italy and Spain (Figure 11). The intensively farmed regions of Western Europe, including France, Germany Denmark and UK, also feature high values of the pressure index. Agricultural areas with low pressure index values are located in the Eastern as well as the Northern and Highland regions.

Figure 11: Composite agricultural pressure index classifying the average intensity of multiple pressures from agriculture on water bodies in a catchment.

Previous comments

  • silvaagu (Agueda Silva) 14 Sep 2021 18:56:35

    The results shown in this figure in certain regions are a little strange but being a composite indicator increases the difficulty of validating these results.

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