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Union, the LUCC (Land Use/Cover Change) Working Group is actively work-
ing to follow up land-use changes around the world (Himyiama, Mather, Bicík &
Milanova, 2005). Historical land use and landscape-structure changes are studied
using old cadastral and military maps, aerial photographs, statistical data on his-
torical land use and other sources of data (Lipský, 2000). Research of historical
land use has been widely developed in the Czech Republic (Bicík, 1998; Bicík
&Jelecek, 2003; Kolejka, 2002 and many others) as well as in other countries of
Central Europe (Gabrovec & Petek, 2003; Krausmann, 2001; Olah & Žigrai 2004).
Land use and landscape structure changes are directly linked to changes in land-
scape character. In recent years, landscape character assessment (LCA) has become
a topical issue of applied landscape science. It is recognised as an important tool
for policy-makers and stakeholders to reach a sustainable management of land.
In the Czech Republic, the term
landscape character
was officially introduced in
1992 in the Legal Act No. 114/1992 Sb., on nature and landscape protection. Since
that time six scientific conferences dealing with landscape character assessment
and protection (the last one in February 2009) have been organised and intensive
discussions among the scientific community have been running in the country.
Several methodological guidelines on LCA have been elaborated and LCA has
become a legal instrument of the nature and landscape protection of the state in the
Czech Republic. The international project ELCAI (European Landscape Character
Assessment Initiative) reviewed state-of-the-art LCA at the national and European
level (Wascher, 2005).
2.2 Importance of Land Use and Landscape-Structure Changes
from the Point of View of Landscape Ecology
Landscape ecology in its dynamic concept is dealing with three main subjects in
the landscape: (1) structure; (2) functions and processes; (3) changes and develop-
ments. These main general attributes of every landscape are mutually connected by
a complex system of feedbacks (Fig. 2.1).
One of the most important notions is that the landscape structure strongly influ-
ences ecological processes and characteristics. Functions and all processes running
in the landscape depend directly on and arise from landscape structure, this means
from the spatial composition of landscape segments. The pattern is an important
feature if one studies the relationship between the various horizontally arranged
complexes of landscape elements (Zonneveld, 1995).
Fig. 2.1
Three main subjects of interest in landscape science in the landscape
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