At the Crossroads of European Landscape Changes: Major Processes of Landscape Change in Czechia since the Middle of the 19th Century and Their Driving Forces

Lucie Kupková,Ivan Bičík,Leoš Jeleček

doi:10.3390/land10010034

Abstract

Changes in the cultural landscape provide essential evidence about the manner and intensity of the interactions between humans and nature. Czechia has a specific location in Central Europe. It is positioned at the crossroads of European landscape changes. These changes can be documented based on a unique database that shows the development of land use since the middle of the 19th century. In this study, we aimed to address the major processes of landscape change that occurred during four periods over the past 165 years, at the cadastral level on the territory of present-day Czechia. Further we identify and discuss proximate and underlying driving forces of the landscape changes. We used land use data from the year 1845, 1896, 1948, 1990, and 2010 that correspond to key events in Czech history. The major processes and intensity of landscape change were evaluated based on calculations of increases and decreases in land use classes between the first and last year of each examined period. The period 1845–1896 was the only period in which arable land increased, and the most recent period, 1990–2010, was the only period during which a grassing over process was recorded. Afforestation was recorded in all periods. The communist period was characterized by unified changes—urbanization, afforestation, arable land decrease, and landscape devastation. The post-communist period was, in some respects, beneficial to the landscape (e.g., grassing over and afforestation, particularly in mountain areas), but it also led to negative processes, such as strong urbanization and land abandonment. Such changes lead to landscape polarization. The landscape changes in Czechia during the period 1845–2010 reflect many important historical events in Europe. In our analysis, we demonstrate the essential impact of underlying drivers and also identify driving forces specific to the development of the Czech territory.

Highlights

Long-term landscape changes at national, regional, or local scales reflect different phases of natural, political, economic, social, technological, and cultural development in the broader international context [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
The main aim of our study is to evaluate the major processes of landscape change at the national level of Czechia over a long period of time (1845–2010)
This period is subdivided into four shorter periods (1845–1896, 1896–1948, 1948–1990, and 1990–2010). For each of these shorter periods, we aim to address the major processes of landscape change, identify their driving forces, and sort the driving forces according to the classification scheme used by [9] which was partially adopted under our conditions

Summary

Introduction

Long-term landscape changes at national, regional, or local scales reflect different phases of natural, political, economic, social, technological, and cultural development in the broader international context [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. A country located in Central Europe, represents a unique model area in which the impacts of societal driving forces on land use and landscape change can be studied over a long period of time. A number of scientific studies have dealt with changing patterns of landscape utilization and its driving forces. Some of these examine long periods of time, usually at local or regional levels, but do not study changes at the national level [10,11,12,13,14,15,16] or deal only with selected land use transformations (for example, of forests and agricultural land [8]). Remote sensing data [17,18,19,20,21,22] or datasets derived from remote sensing imagery, such as CORINE or the GlobCover dataset [23,24,25,26,27] that have low spatial resolution, are often used to study extensive areas

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