In the case studies in Western and Eastern Europe we observed stabilisation during the last decade, and no clear tendency of increase or decrease of land use intensity.
In response, European policies started to promote programs to set-aside land and incentivize the decrease of land use intensity (Küster, 2010), which contributed to the stagnation of harvests by the late 1980s in West Germany (Fig. 3b).
The study conducted (Mekonnen and Aticho 2011) in Jimma, Ethiopia indicated that, a shortage of agricultural land and decrease of agricultural land productivity, the surrounding communities forced to drain the wetland for crop cultivation, in order to meet their needs.
Including this feedback may decrease estimates of land carbon uptake in some regions.
High intensity extraction of coal underground results in large scale ground settlement, barren farmland, and decrease of cultivated land.
During the group discussion with key informants, participants stated that rainfall shortages (both during the long and short rainy seasons), land privatization, decrement (decrease of grazing lands in terms of size), and population growth, as well as issues over climate change, are seen as crucially constraining factors of crop production and productivity.
Simultaneously, the policy of returning farmland to forestland was carried out in whole province during 2001-2003 leading to the decrease of cultivated land area.
And the changes have had positive impacts on water resource utilization, oasis microclimate, and the internal environment of the oasis because of the increase of waste grassland and decrease of sand land.
Almost everywhere, these great nomads are restricted to ever-decreasing pockets of land.
However, during the group discussion and in-depth interview, farmers reported that there was shortage of feed for their livestock, especially during the dry season because of the decreased productivity of available grazing lands and decrease of the grazing lands due to conversion of grazing land into cultivation land.
However, the overall trends in land use and land cover between 1950 and 1989 in East and West Germany were very similar with pronounced decreases of agricultural land on either side of the Iron Curtain (Fig. 2b and c).
