Advanced Assessment of the Agro-Silvo-Pastoral Coherence in Transboundary Transitional Water Regions

Transitional waters play a vital role in the ecological health and sustainability of coastal areas. According to European Union legislation, transitional waters are coastal water bodies influenced by freshwater flows but are partly saline due to their proximity to the sea. This study focuses on agricultural and forestry regions adjacent to transboundary transitional waters—i.e., areas where two or more countries share an estuary, tidal inlet, delta, or lagoon and have a contiguous border in their territorial waters. The objective of the study is to determine the patterns of riparian agroforestry around the transboundary transitional waters in Europe and the dependence of the sustainability of these agro-silvo-pastoral systems under stress on the overall cross-border coherence of the countries sharing these waters. The innovative methodology uses GIS and geostatistical interpretation to quantitatively interpret multi-layered spatial data from remote sensing and other sources. The article’s main finding is that in the direct catchment areas of 12 transboundary transitional waters in three European bioregions—the Baltic Sea, the Adriatic and Black Seas, and the Northeast Atlantic—the Dissimilarity Index values vary from 1.5% to 8.2% in different agroforestry systems.