Geografie 2018, 123, 295-316
Evaluation of land cover/land use development in selected landscape conservation areas in comparison to non-protected areas
Qualities of protected areas in Europe are the result of mutual collaboration, and the influence of natural conditions and historical development. Therefore, landscape protection has a wider scope. In addition to the protection of the landscape’s natural qualities, landscape protection also needs to identify human-driven impacts that support or directly affect landscape qualities. We have compared the development of land use/land cover in selected landscape conservation areas, and suitably selected referential areas in four time levels within a period of more than 150 years. The goals were to identify the types of land use that decrease, or increase the qualities of landscape, and to verify the hypothesis that landscape conservation areas, protected areas, have gone through a different land use/land cover development than the referential areas. The results of this comparison do not confirm our hypothesis. The most substantial changes in the rural areas in Czechia took place in a distant past not covered by the dataset used in this study.
Keywords
cultural landscape, landscape protection, landscape conservation areas, land cover/land use changes, Czechia.
Funding
This research was funded by a long-term research project of the Faculty of Science, Charles University (PRVOUK P43 Geografie) and by institutional support from the Silva Tarouca Research Institute for Landscape and Ornamental Gardening (VUKOZ-IP-00027073).
