Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
Landscape Change in the Seewinkel:
Comparisons Among Centuries
Martin A. Prinz, Thomas Wrbka, and Karl Reiter
9.1 Existing Research and Specific Research Question
Landscape pattern displays the interaction between natural and cultural forces
(Baudry, 1989; Naveh, 1995; Bürgi, Hersperger, & Schneeberger, 2004; Haber,
2004). In times of changing land-use systems (intensification and unification),
climate change and biodiversity loss it is necessary and helpful to know how land-
scapes were built up in former times to develop potential scenarios for the future
(Antrop, 2004, 2005). This change is, as is typical for most landscapes, a slow
ongoing process which can only be seen by comparing data from different centuries.
Various studies have dealt with this issue, but most of them tried to picture changes
over decades (e.g. Jenerette & Wu, 2001; Nelson, Soranno, & Qi, 2002; Crews-
Meyer, 2004) not over centuries (e.g. White & Mladenoff, 1994; Tasser, Teutsch,
Noggler, & Tappenier, 2007). Also the Seewinkel, an area east of Lake Neusiedl has
been partly analysed (Kohler, Rauer, & Wendelin, 1994).
Land-use change has been shown as an important driver for biological impover-
ishment, especially in European agricultural landscapes (Abensperg-Traun, Wrbka,
Bieringer, & Hobbs, 2004). Therefore, modern conservation strategies need a state
of the art documentation of not only recent but also historical trajectories of
landscape change.
On the basis of the interpretation of maps, this kind of analysis was only possible
because of the existing maps of the Military Surveys (MS) from the eighteenth and
nineteenth century. Like other old maps (Cajthaml, 2007a; Krejcí & Cajthaml, 2007)
these data have already been used in many projects for answering various ecological
and historical questions concerning land use and land cover throughout the area of
the former Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy (e.g. Kozak, 2003; Dömötörfy, Reeder,
& Pomogyi, 2003; Kovács, Zámolyi, Székely, & Papp, 2008; Timár & Pišút, 2008;
Timár et al., 2008).
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