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history, but those that have occurred since the 1950s have no equivalent in terms
of their speed and extent in the Czech rural landscape. According to official
instructions, parcels of arable land were unified so as not to be interrupted by mead-
ows, pastures, shrubs or other elements hampering efficient cultivation. During the
transition to socialist large-scale production, landscape structure changed rapidly
towards its significant simplification (Lipský, 1991). The traditional fine-grained
structure of the Czech rural landscape corresponding with small-scale private agri-
culture technologies changed dramatically and non-reversibly during that time. The
size of agricultural holdings was increased 50-times, many meadows in floodplains
were ploughed and most of the permanent vegetation structures in the open agricul-
tural landscape were removed (Lipský, 1995). Agricultural plots were perceived
as only a monofunctional place for production subordinated to requirements of
increasingly heavier and more efficient agricultural machinery. The size of field
plots, decrease in the area of permanent grasslands, chemisation and intensification
of agricultural production reached its apogee in the 1980s. The negative influence
of socialist agriculture on the landscape led to official reports on the state of the
environment showing early after 1990 drastic statistics exemplifying the extent of
the clearing and liquidation of scattered greenery from the agricultural landscape
including 4.000 km of lines of wood vegetation, 3.600 ha of scattered greenery,
49.000 km of balks and 158.000 km of field roads that had been removed from the
Czech rural landscape (Moldan et al., 1990).
On the other hand there are also some changes that had a positive environmental
effect such as afforestation and spontaneous successive distribution of shrubland
on slopes, a dispersal of tree stands and wetlands along unmaintained streams and
on other places not suitable for heavy mechanisation and large-scale agriculture.
The removal of field balks and margins, solitary and linear scattered greenery from
the agricultural landscape was compensated by the creation of a new wilderness.
These sites have become a refuge for endangered plants and animals which were
forced away from intensively used agricultural lands. If we compare the decrease in
permanent greenery from the fields with its increase in abandoned lands, the result
is surprising: the total area of permanent non-forest greenery has doubled in the
landscape during the period 1950-1990 (Kubeš, 1994; Lipský, 2005).
The traditional character of the Czech rural landscape with its small-scale mosaic
of patches has changed into a large-scale landscape of collective open fields (Lipský,
1995).
On the contrary in southeast Poland, where private ownership and a traditional
way of farming remained during the socialist era, the small-scale landscape has been
preserved to the present day. This specific regional type of agricultural landscape
that was named “Poland Strip Fields” was distinguished as one of 30 significant Pan-
European landscape types in the first Pan-European landscape typology (Meeus,
1995). Many Englishmen and Dutchmen, who remember their countries from the
1950s and 1960s, say when they see this Polish landscape: “This is how I remember
nature of my childhood. I never thought I would see it, and I found it here, in Poland”
(quoted by Szukay, 2009, Nature and landscape protection in Poland, unpublished).
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