Geografie 2009, 114, 263-281
Land use and landscape changes in Czechia during the period of transition 1990–2007
The article analyzes land use changes and their influence on landscape development in Czechia during the complex period of transition after 1990 to a democratic system with a capitalist economy. To analyze the database of cadastral data on land use of about 13,000 comparable basic territorial units (CTU) and their regional differentiation the typology method (the establishment of types of changes in CTUs and their portion of all CTUs) was used above all. At the same time tables follow the periods which formed over the long-term the preceding land use situation in Czechia at the start of the transition (1845–1948 and 1948–1990). Ascertained changes and trends in land use changes are then interpreted on the basis of searching out and explaining the main political, economic and social factors (or societal driving forces) that caused them. Their interaction with natural conditions is taken into account as well.
Keywords
land use changes, landscape development, societal driving forces, societal transition, Czechia.
Funding
This study has been supported by Grant Agency of the Czech Republic research project No. 205/09/0995 “Regional differentiations and possible risks of land use as reflection of functional changes of landscape in Czechia 1990–2010”, by Grant Agency of the Academy of Science of the Czech Republic research project No. KJB301110705 “Land use of model regions in the context of social metabolism of Czechoslovakia”, and State Research Plan MSM 0021620831 “Geographical Systems and Risk Processes in Context of Global Changes and European Integration”.
