Over the past decades, landscapes worldwide have experienced changes
(e.g., urbanization, agricultural intensification, expansion of
renewable energy uses) at magnitudes that put their sustainability at
risk. The understanding of the drivers of these landscape changes
remains challenging, partly because landscape research is spread across
many domains and disciplines. We here provide a systematic synthesis of
144 studies that identify the proximate and underlying drivers of
landscape change across Europe. First, we categorize how driving forces
have been addressed and find that most studies consider medium-term time
scales and local spatial scales. Most studies assessed only one case
study area, one spatial scale, and less than four points in time.
Second, we analyze geographical coverage of studies and reveal that
countries with a non-European Union/European Free Trade Association
membership; low Gross Domestic Product; boreal, steppic, and arctic
landscapes; as well as forestland systems are underrepresented in the
literature. Third, our review shows that land
abandonment/extensification is the most prominent (62% of cases) among
multiple proximate drivers of landscape change. Fourthly, we find that
distinct combinations of mainly political/institutional, cultural, and
natural/spatial underlying drivers are determining landscape change,
rather than single key drivers. Our systematic review indicates
knowledge gaps that can be filled by: (a) expanding the scope of studies
to include underrepresented landscapes; (b) clarifying the
identification and role of actors in landscape change; (c) deploying
more robust tools and methods to quantitatively assess the causalities
of landscape change; (d) setting up long-term studies that go beyond
mapping land-cover change only; (e) strengthening cross-site and
cross-country comparisons of landscape drivers; (f) designing
multi-scale studies that consider teleconnections; (g) considering
subtle and novel processes of landscape change.