Did the Crisis of the late Middle Ages cause a notable expansion of wilderness in Europe?

Question

There was a lot of wild forest in the early Middle Ages, around 75% in the 9th century according to Wikipedia, much of which was cleared during the population boom in the High Middle Ages. I also read on Wikipedia that in the late Middle Ages the European population possibly dropped by half due to the events sometimes collectively known as the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Black Death, Great Famine of 1315-1317 and the Little Ice Age), with the population not replenishing to pre-crisis levels for some centuries.

Although I found a number of sources^{cite needed} talking about the ramifications of the population decline, I couldn't find anything specifically about the land, and whether or not there was any notable return of farmed/cleared land to wilderness or forest after the population decline, including agricultural land, pasture, or managed woodland.

Answer 1

If you speak German, you might want to look for terms like Wüstung or, more specifically, Flurwüstung. The short version is that (in Germany) there definitely were quite a number of villages and even towns that were given up in the 14th/15th century.

In some cases, the fields and meadows continued to be used as fields and meadows, in others they eventually turned into forests. Opinions vary on whether German forests are really wilderness, though.