D2.2 – Narratives of determinants of land use change and their diversity across Europe

D2.2 – Narratives of determinants of land use change and their diversity across Europe was submitted by Stockholm University in February 2025. The description of the deliverable is available below and the full deliverable is at the end for download.

This Deliverable is part of Task 2.4 Time-geographical approach to generate a new historical overview of land use change patterns over Europe, within Work Package 2 Historical Land Use Change.

Deliverable 2.2 is an illustrated report of how land use change has been shaped across Europe (EU+GB and CH), in and between the twelve (12) Practice Cases involved in the PLUS Change project.

Grounded in time-geography and adopting transdisciplinary methodological approaches in data creation and analysis, the deliverable presents a new enriched understanding of historical land use trajectories over the last century.

By integrating the different forms of evidence produced within WP2, Deliverable 2.2 links socioeconomic, geopolitical, and environmental factors of land use change directly from combined local knowledge and new spatial data. Furthermore, it highlights diverse spatial and temporal unfolding of land use changes, previously undocumented. This has been done by comparing the narratives of land use change compiled in WP2 and framing further the results of this comparison within major global historical events of the 20th century.

These findings shed light on the determinants and drivers that may have shaped the historical evolution of land use in the geographical areas represented by the Practice Cases, as well as raising new lines of inquiry into land use dynamics of the future.