Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
capitalist West”. A special zone was the area between the Iron Curtain and the bor-
der itself, which was totally inaccessible and excluded from any economic use (e.g.
Bicík & Štepánek, 1994). Here, the afforestation was mostly spontaneous.
The end of the year 1989 created conditions for an abolishment of strongly
controlled borders with both “Eastern” and “Western” neighbours of Czechia
(Germany - East and West earlier, Austria, Poland, and most recently Slovakia from
1993). In the period 1990-2004, many new checkpoints were installed on Czech
borders, especially on highways and motorways. Finally, borders lost the old func-
tions they played during the last century, and gained a new role, especially after
Czechia joined the EU and the Schengen Treaty.
All these factors should result in a specific land-use structure and its changes in
border regions. Border regions should be used less intensively, i.e. they should be
exposed to a weaker anthropogenic impact - with less arable land and areas con-
nected with urbanisation (built up areas, gardens, etc.), and more forested areas,
permanent grasslands and abandoned or unused land. Furthermore, border regions
should exhibit a stronger extensification (decrease of anthropogenic activity), espe-
cially in time periods of radical political influences, for example when the borders
were closed by the Iron Curtain (Štepánek, 2002).
During the period of one century, the borders of the new country created in 1918
changed their functions many times. This fact led us to forming several research
hypotheses. How did the border line with different neighbours of Czechia influence
the landscape in its surroundings in different time periods? How was land-use struc-
ture influenced by borders in different conditions in comparison with the interior of
Czechia? How did the economic and political transformation after 1990 influence
land-use structure in border regions?
In the past, we realized several studies of border regions using statistical data on
land-use changes (Bicík & Štepánek, 1994; Štepánek, 2002; Bicík & Kabrda, 2008).
In this article, we examine land-use changes in border regions of Czechia during the
ten years of transformation (1990-2000) in comparison with the older period 1948-
1990 (centrally planned economy). For better understanding of processes occurring
in the Czech border landscape after the fall of the Iron Curtain, we will compare
the results obtained for the years 1990 and 2000 with land-cover data from remote
sensing - from the CORINE land-cover database (using LANDSAT images) for
1990 and 2000.
6.2 Data Sources and Methods
Our research is based on two different data sources: cadastral statistics (LUCC UK
database), and the CORINE land-cover database - see the following text in this
chapter. Accordingly, methods, and studied territories and time horizons differ as
well.
The first data source is the database of long-term land-use changes in Czechia
(LUCC UK Prague, http://lucc.ic.cz ). It is derived from cadastral statistics (see
Search WWH ::




Custom Search