Assessment of The Importance of The Drivers of Land-Use/Land-Cover Changes on The National Level: The Case of Serbia

Abstract

In-depth knowledge about land-use/land-cover changes, drivers and the driver's importance is nec- essary both for understanding change processes in the environment, economy and society as a whole and further research, modelling and decision-makin g related to land-use/land-cover changes. The study assesses the importance of two biophysical and five socio-economic drivers of land-use/land-cover changes for six land-use/land cover change pro- cesses during the 2000–2018 period in Serbia using mixed methods, GIS and machine learning. The re- sults indicate that socio-economic drivers, especially the distance from roads, water and protected areas , are more important for national land-use/land cover change processes than biophysical drivers. The study gives insights into the drivers' usefulness for model- ling future land-use/land-cover change processes on the national level in Serbia. Furthermore, it could be observed as one of the initial steps in the future anal- ysis of the effects of land-use/land-cover changes on landscape diversity, further development of the land- use/land-cover changes research and related deci- sion-making processes.