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(3) creation of Dyje (Thaya) National park on the Czech-Austrian border; (4) devel-
opment of new roads and highways in Slovakia near its capital of Bratislava, located
directly on the observed belt; (5) the same applies to a new dam and regulations for
the Danube river.
If we consider the nature of these changes (Table 6.3), the most important pro-
cesses were the loss of arable land to the detriment of grasslands, forests and built
up areas - changes more or less common for most European landscapes (see above).
Significantly, the trends (direction of changes) were the same on both sides of the
former Iron Curtain, but stronger to the east. This supports our previous statements -
the East is “catching-up” with the West after a sudden change of political and
institutional regimes (Jelecek, 2002).
Table 6.4, a summary of the transition matrix, provides information on real
land-cover changes in pixels between the years 1990 and 2000. Differences can
be identified between the eastern and western part of the studied territory. Only
two processes were of real importance to the east of the Iron Curtain - grassing-
over of arable land (almost 50% of all changes) and afforestation of grasslands
(over 20% of changes). These trends, signs of extensification of land use resulting
from renewed functioning of market forces and decline of agriculture after 1990,
comply with the findings of the previous text. On the contrary, more types (even
contradictory) of land-cover transitions occurred to the west of the Iron Curtain -
the development was greater and smoother there. Besides the trends of extensifica-
tion (grassing-over of arable land, afforestation of grasslands), also the processes of
intensification (development on arable land, transformation of forests to grasslands)
were important there.
We can summarize that all figures presented here document deeper land-cover
changes on the eastern side of the former Iron Curtain. Furthermore, the same types
of changes with the same intensity on both sides of the borders did not take place. In
the eastern part of the studied territory, there were more common processes leading
to extensification, connected with a loss of support for agricultural production. On
the western side, a more regular distribution of changes among all possible types
can be seen.
6.5 Conclusions
We have to stress that the two methods used in this article are not fully comparable.
The first is based on cadastral statistics, describes land use, and has a certain degree
of delay and inaccuracy in comparison with reality (especially because it is based
on what the land owners/users report to Cadastral Offices). The second method,
depicting land cover, and based on an interpretation of remote sensing data in the
form of the CORINE database, has a relatively coarse resolution (minimal mapping
unit) of 25 ha (5 ha for land-cover changes). Different methods and data sources can
then lead to slightly different results.
For instance, cadastral data for the Czech borderland in the year 2000 display
a lower share of permanent grasslands and a higher share of arable land when
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