Abstract
Historical maps are critical for long-term land use reconstructions; however, quantifying the uncertainty involved in comparing historical maps with recent data remains a considerable challenge. To date, many works have focused on the technical aspects of comparing historical and contemporary materials, but the potential sources of uncertainty inherent in historical data remain poorly understood. In this paper, we analyze the impacts of the topographic accessibility and cartographer’s field position on the content quality of historical Austrian second military survey maps by referring to independent census data. Our results show that the topographic accessibility and visibility from the cartographer’s surveying table points had very little impact on the map content quality and that the surveying table point locations were uniformly distributed throughout the area, regardless of the landscape conditions. These findings demonstrate that the second military survey maps can be seen as valuable and consistent historical data sources, making them especially useful for long-term land use research in Central Europe.
Highlights
The historical topographic accessibility was analyzed based on the road network presented on the second military surveyModels maps
Our visibility analysis was based on a globally available digital elevation model (DEM) model since the study data were acquired in the form of geographic information system (GIS) files [49] and used to create a ‘distance to main roads’
Our visibility analysis was based on a globally available DEM model since the study area is located in the territory of Poland and Ukraine and because the more detailed LIDARbased DEM did not cover the whole study area
Summary
To assess the dynamics of such changes, long-term land change studies must be performed to facilitate a comparison with recent analyses. Since historical maps differ in scale, have inconsistent legends, or were produced with different aims, there is always uncertainty involved in using them for long-term comparisons [8,9,10]. The conceptual framework designed by Leyk et al [11] to assess the level of uncertainty involved in such analyses distinguishes three independent domains of uncertainty for subsequent land use modelling—those inherent in historical data, those caused by data processing, and those dependent on the application. The assessment conducted by Leyk et al [11] to evaluate the importance of these domains showed that the first domain—the uncertainty inherent in historical data (production-oriented uncertainty)—seems to be the most relevant
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