Landscape, sustainability and the socioeconomy in the coastal urdaibai biosphere reserve, Northern Spain

The main objective of this study is to analyze the sustainability of the landscapes in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve (UBR) through the relationship between the landscape units and the socio-economic activities. The UBR is located in the north of Spain, being an area of great ecological and landscape values in anurbanized environment. The landscape is composed by numerous and varied units composed by spontaneous communities and those that are dependent on human activities. The economic activity depends mainly on the industrial and service sectors. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was carried out using territorial and socioeconomic indicators for each municipality. The relationship between the landscape and the socio-economic activity was performed using the Pearson’s multiple correlation test. Our results suggest that the sustainability of the cultural landscape units in the UBR is linked to the socioeconomic activities in the industrial and service sectors. Journal of Biodiversity and Environmental Sciences-JBES is an open-access scholarly research journal, published by International Network for Natural Sciences-INNSPUB. JBES published original scientific articles in different field of Environmental Sciences and Biodiversity. JBES published 2 Volume and 12 issue per calendar year.J. Bio. Env. Sci. 10(1), 150-160, January 2017