LANDSCAPE�CHANGES�IN�THE�CULTURAL�LANDSCAPE�OF�NORTH-WEST�BOHEMIA

Abstract

The European landscape and its heritage surely correspond by their characters into the cultural landscape that develops for thousands of years. Each phase of landscape development is characteristically reflected in the current landscape. There are many specifics elements of cultural landscape, for example castle gardens and parks. In the Czech Republic there exist over 800 castles. Construction of a dense network of aristocratic residences has its historical and social roots. In their building there often coincided our beautiful and diverse nature. Therefore, most of the castle buildings are connected with their neighborhood and it makes together a unit. On the northwest of the Czech Republic there are large deposits of brown coal. This fact caused that many villages and towns, as well as open countryside were already destroyed. Today, there exists a will, to restore this destroyed landscape and to return of the life into it. It is desirable to restore it and bring back landscape elements that have been destroyed historical-cultural elements. Parks and gardens are ideal segment that can be recovered and have its cultural, aesthetic, as well as ecological importance in the landscape. We deal with parks in the northwest of the Czech Republic, which were completely destroyed due to mining or have been impacted by mining directly or indirectly. We monitored their progress from year 1841 to the present time. It is possible to make this research due to unique historical maps of stable cadastre and historic aerial imagery and mapping, and at last but not least due to the field mapping. We focus on the distribution of vegetation in the park or garden, the location of the park in the cadastre and land use of the whole cadastre and of the region.