Abstract
Central European landscape has undergone dramatic changes during the last decades. Big changes in the political and economic systems resulted in a large-scale transformation in land use, especially in the agricultural and silvicultural sectors. At the same time, significant changes in urban regions were recorded. In order to quantify and compare the most important processes in land cover changes, we analyzed so-called land cover flows within four post-communist countries in Central Europe – Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary – using CORINE Land Cover databases for 1990, 2000 and 2006. Contradictory processes in landscape change were recorded such as large scale agricultural extensification vs. intensification, or afforestation vs. deforestation. Moreover, there are significant regional differences in the changes in spatial patterns.
Highlights
There is no part of the Earth’s surface that has not been influenced by human activities
While the largest change in land cover was due to afforestation during both periods, in second place was the extensification of agriculture in the first period and deforestation in the second period
While the paper by Feranec et al (2010) shows that the European landscape was significantly shaped by the six basic processes of changes in land cover it is clear that some processes were more effective and widespread while others were not so significant
Summary
There is no part of the Earth’s surface that has not been influenced by human activities. Landscape changes are caused by both natural processes and human activities. Landscape changes are usually considered as positive and/or negative. This depends on the overall context of the landscape. In addition to completely new processes, the termination or temporary interruption of changes in landscape may result in a transformation of the landscape – for example, abandonment of an agricultural landscape and leaving it to spontaneous development. This usually results in the spread of trees in open habitats, and to a climax forest. Understanding landscape development is an important part of caring for landscapes
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