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Agricultural Land Degradation in Iceland

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Impact of Agriculture on Soil Degradation II

Part of the book series: The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry ((HEC,volume 121))

Abstract

Iceland is located just south of the Arctic Circle. Its cold climate, volcanic origin, erodible soils, and relative isolation make it very sensitive to human impact. Humans arrived in Iceland ~1,150 years ago, bringing with them their pastoral ways of life, which had large impacts on Iceland’s subarctic ecosystems. The relatively short history of human land use and the good documentation of this period provide a unique opportunity to study the drivers of land degradation related to human land use practices and how the interactions between society, economy, and the natural environment have changed over time. Centuries of agricultural use in Iceland under marginal natural conditions have caused severe and large-scale land degradation, which is a main environmental concern still today. A framework model for land condition response in Iceland (Ice-LaCoRe) helps separate the underlying reasons, drivers, processes, states, and consequences of land degradation, where decoupling mechanisms disrupt the cycle and favour inaction in dealing with the poor state of the land. Recognition of the poor state of Icelandic ecosystems and the identification of such decoupling mechanisms is a critical step to the effective implementation of sustainable land uses and to prevent further land degradation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Agricultural University of Iceland, Hvanneyri, Iceland

    Isabel C. Barrio & Ólafur Arnalds

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  1. Isabel C. Barrio
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  2. Ólafur Arnalds
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Correspondence to Isabel C. Barrio .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Management Laboratory, Mykolas Romeris Univerisity, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Paulo Pereira

  2. Department of Plant Biology and Ecology, University of Seville, Seville, Spain

    Miriam Muñoz-Rojas

  3. Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Igor Bogunovic

  4. Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Wenwu Zhao

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Barrio, I.C., Arnalds, Ó. (2022). Agricultural Land Degradation in Iceland. In: Pereira, P., Muñoz-Rojas, M., Bogunovic, I., Zhao, W. (eds) Impact of Agriculture on Soil Degradation II. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, vol 121. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/698_2022_920

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