Continuity and Change in the Ricote Valley Region (Southeastern Spain): An Integrated Analysis of Socio-Demographic, Territorial and Landscape Transformations

Historically, the Ricote Valley Region (Region of Murcia) has based its economic development on traditional agriculture based on the exploitation of water resources for the cultivation of citrus and fruit trees. Since the middle of the last century, industrial and service development, urban attraction and agricultural policies have generated a multitude of social, population and territorial transformations in this geographical area. The Ricote Valley Region has suffered an unprecedented demographic decline, making it one of the areas with the greatest depopulation problem in SE Spain. The demographic emptying of this region brings with it other associated problems, such as the abandonment of the land and traditional farming systems, with the consequent change in land use. This work aims to analyse both the demographic transition experienced by this Murcian region, the changes in land use/land cover generated and the possible relationship between both phenomena. In order to address these objectives, the methodology and sources used have been diverse. In this regard, population dynamics have been assessed by analysing the evolution experienced by different demographic indicators whose information has been obtained from the National Institute of Statistics (NIS) and the Murcia Regional Statistics Centre (MRSC). In turn, the transformations of the territorial surface have been obtained by comparing the representation of land cover/use present in the years 1990 and 2018 by means of georeferenced spatial information elaborated by the Corine Land Cover project (CLC). The results obtained show that, despite the fact that the region as a whole has experienced a positive population evolution, three of the seven municipalities that comprise it have been suffering the most significant depopulation process in their history for decades. In addition, the analysis of changes in land cover/land use revealed that 27.5% of the territory of the region has been transformed over the last 30 years, with a significant increase in permanently irrigated land. Finally, the correlation of information derived from the two proposed objectives shows a significant relationship between demographic evolution and the degree of territorial transformation suffered by each of the municipalities studied.