A Technique to Evaluate Agricultural Landscape Changes on the Basis of GIS-Processed 1861 Demarcation Plans and Current Description of Kenozero National Park

Abstract

In many Russian nature reserves traditional landscapes are objects of important historical and cultural heritage. To preserve and restore them one needs to deeply understand their development, formation and degradation processes. In the north of European Russia agricultural landscapes are often covered with forests and lose their features when agricultural activity decreases. However, structural characteristics of these forests as a rule tell us about their development and peculiarities of successions. The study aims at creating a technique to estimate the scope of former agricultural land development, model historical transformation of agricultural landscapes and identify plots of slash and burn, shifting, two and three field agriculture judging by structural characteristics of post-agrarian forests. Aided by GIS the study compares raster analogs of land demarcation plans of the second half of the 19th century and vector layers of present day forests with attributive data on the forest structure. The use of cartographic forest data and inventory forest characteristics to compare with former land management documents related to the plot named have not been found in studies before. High precision of present day land management provides for permitted comparability with old demarcation plans and allows one to use inventory data for inter-landscape differentiation of agricultural landscapes in the 19th century. The study covers a model plot within Kenozero National Park (Arkhangelsk Region) addressing 1861 demarcation plans and 2014 forests GIS developed by Arkhangelsk branch of Roslesinforg. GIS processing of 19th century and present day demarcation plans provides for modeling agricultural landscape changes in relation to separate plots, trace the influence of soil conditions and elements of agrarian use on topological and inventory changes of emerging forests and reconstruct the biodiversity of ecosystems in the past.