Exploring Traditional Routes of Seasonal Transhumance Movements with the Help of GIS. The Case Study of a Mountainous Village in Southwest Macedonia, Greece

Transhumance is a traditional livestock system with the historical origin of many centuries. The seasonal migrations of flocks and people, in Greece and elsewhere, were held at predetermined paths and area-specific tactics. This paper explores the traditional transhumance routes between highlands of southwestern Macedonia, Greece and lowlands of either Macedonia or Thessaly, by adopting modern geo-informatics-tools, such as GIS. The adopted technology provides a powerful tool to visualize the traditional routes, to analyze the characteristic elements of each route, and to determine the criteria involved in the selection. The ultimate goal of this work is to bring out the traditional way of transhumance, not as a historical–museum piece of information but as an efficient farming system that (with the proper technological assistance) can be explored and applied by modern farmers, towards establishing an efficient and sustainable animal husbandry system.