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The paper discusses modern geographic processes on Croatian small inhabited islands. For centuries, Croatian small islands have been continuously inhabited area characterized by different social and economic activities. However, in the last several decades, the islands have experienced a severe depopulation, and on the other hand, the interest for occasional use of that attractive insular space for recreational purposes increased. Consequently, the basic insular functions have changed, which, among other things, contributes to changes of insular landscape and to the changed role of small islands in regional socio-economic systems.

The island of Olib, one of the small Croatian islands, is a rural space of striking depopulation and economic regression. Centuries-long development dynamics within the framework of the Mediterranean polycultural production has been seriously disrupted by the deagrarianism and an intensive emigration. It has considerably weakened the demographic basis, which is the main factor of the socio-economic development. In the recent half-century period the way of life has changed radically, which, among other things, manifested also in the changes of island (rural) landscape. Arable areas are fewer and fewer, social fallow dominates, and the physiognomy of the only island settlement has also significantly changed. The appearance and functions of a traditional Mediterranean island settlement have been replaced by an urbanely nuanced "spatial mechanism", where newbuilt weekend houses and renewed old village homes, primarily intended for rest and recreation, have predominant importance.

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The Italian abbot Alberto Fortis (1741-1803), educated in geology, petrology, mineralogy, and palaeontology by eminent 18thcentury naturalists, performed several extensive explorations in Istria and Dalmatia -provinces of the former Venetian Republic, now the littoral part of Croatia. Notes from some of these journeys, collected in 1774 in the book Viaggio in Dalmazia, encompass observations of almost all aspects of social and physical features of Dalmatian people and land. From a geological point of view, Fortis' remarks generally correspond to recent studies, with some exceptions in palaeontological and petrological issues. His understanding of natural processes, mainly in karstology and hydrology, is mostly surprisingly good. Besides, he addressed critics to previous writers, whose theories, influenced by older authorities, had been taken for granted instead of being re-examined by field explorations. His unjustly neglected work was the first extensive and comprehensive study of this part of Europe, little known in the then scientific community. To cite this article: M.