Landscape Changes of Rural Protected Landscape Areas in Czechia: From Arable Land to Permanent Grassland – From Old to New Unification?

Abstract

The Czech rural landscape is a subject of research because it is affected by both intensification and extensification of land cover. This landscape was influenced in recent decades by political and socio-economic changes; we studied how these changes were reflected in the land cover development in protected areas. We selected ten Protected landscape areas (PLAs) with a significant share of open agricultural landscape and focused on land cover changes from the 1950s till the present with four milestones (1950s, 1990, 2004-2006, 2016-2019). Based on vectorised land cover data, analyses of land cover changes, land cover flows and landscape structure were performed.

Keywords

• land cover change
• landscape structure
• land cover flows
• protected landscape area
• czechia