Ownership and soil quality as sources of agricultural land fragmentation in highly fragmented ownership patterns

The relation between landscape structure and its drivers is a central issue in studies of landscape ecology. However, agricultural land fragmentation is dealt with in only a few such studies. We have investigated the effects of ownership and soil quality on agricultural land fragmentation in the highly fragmented ownership patterns that characterize some of the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Using patch-scale spatial data generated from GIS, Minimal Adequate Models, based on ANOVA, were performed to test for the effects of ownership and soil quality patterns on arable land and grassland fragmentation across 483 study areas. The results show that there are important differences in the predictors of fragmentation between arable land and grassland. Grassland fragmentation was found to be associated particularly with ownership fragmentation, whereas arable land fragmentation tended to be driven mainly by soil conditions. A higher proportion of public ownership supports the more frequent appearance of larger patches. We found a significantly positive relationship between natural soil fertility and arable land fragmentation, while there was a strongly negative relationship between natural soil fertility and grassland fragmentation. Soil quality diversity was observed to be the most important driver affecting arable land fragmentation, but only a non-significant driver of grassland fragmentation. The study provides arguments for intervention aimed at reducing the huge differences between the levels of land-ownership and the land-use fragmentation.