The objective of this book is to analyze changes in the landscape of Czechoslovakia / the Czech Republic since the first half of the 19th century. The text focuses not only on describing these considerable changes by means of statistical and spatial data, but also on explaining the processes, societal, economic, political and institutional forces that drive them. Drawing on more than two decades of experience with land use research, the authors have combined methods and approaches from the fields of human geography, cartography, landscape ecology, historical geography and environmental history. The authors understand land use research as a way of analyzing nature-society interactions, their development, spatial aspects, causes and impacts. Czechoslovakia / the Czech Republic serves as an example, combining general processes occurring in landscapes of developed countries with the results of regionally specific driving forces, most of them political (world wars, communism, return to market economy etc.).

Describes processes occurring in Czech landscape since the mid-19th century, ranging from losses of agricultural land and urbanisation, to landscape simplification and regional differentiation of land use structure Combines assessment of statistical and spatial land use data with explanation of societal, economic and political forces driving land use changes Understands land use research as a way to analyse long-term development of nature-society interaction and its causes and impacts in a spatially explicit manner Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext
Ivan Bicík received his doctorate at Charles University in Prague. He is the Chairman of the IGU LUCC Commission (International Geographical Union Commission on Land Use/Cover Change).

Klappentext

The objective of this book is to analyze changes in the landscape of Czechoslovakia / the Czech Republic since the first half of the 19th century. The text focuses not only on describing these considerable changes by means of statistical and spatial data, but also on explaining the processes, societal, economic, political and institutional forces that drive them. Drawing on more than two decades of experience with land use research, the authors have combined methods and approaches from the fields of human geography, cartography, landscape ecology, historical geography and environmental history. The authors understand land use research as a way of analyzing nature-society interactions, their development, spatial aspects, causes and impacts. Czechoslovakia / the Czech Republic serves as an example, combining general processes occurring in landscapes of developed countries with the results of regionally specific driving forces, most of them political (world wars, communism, return to market economy etc.).

Inhalt
Introduction.- Land use research.- Influence of natural conditions on land use.- Influence of socio-economic conditions on land use.- Data sources and research methods.- Land use changes in Czechia 18452010.- Land use changes 18452010 in selected model areas.- Conclusions.