By Anna Strojek:
Assessment of European cultural- historic landscapes in the scope of EURURALIS project
Abstract:
Cultural historic landscapes are the result of human activities. They consist of abiotic, biotic and cultural elements, which were changed and adapted by people for many years. Land use types make one landscape being different from the other. Landscapes in the European Union are shaped by agricultural processes, which are a result of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Observation of changes which landscapes undergo can be used to evaluate and adapt the CAP.
Meeus classification provides information about cultural historic landscapes in Europe. This is the only available classification which classifies landscapes from cultural historic perspective. Other study about landscapes, but prepared from more bio- physical perspective, is Mücher landscape classification. The combination of two studies is used to prepare new cultural historic landscape classification, so called Memus. It is further used to identify the future landscape changes.
Landscape structure is important factor when analyzing undergoing landscape changes. It determines landscape vulnerability and resilience and can serve as an identification of predicted transformations.
The EURURALIS project is focused on estimating land use changes in European Union during next 30 years. The results are dependent on scenarios and conditions ascribed to them. The project prognoses changes, mainly from non irrigated land, pasture and forest, to urban areas and abandoned land. The amount of changes is dependent on the land use type being present in the given country and region. The scope of this research is to state whether land use changes prognoses by EURURALIS scenarios can be used in assessing landscape changes.
The identification of changes in cultural historic landscapes, as a result of land use changes, is prepared. The obtained results identify that land use transformations have limited impact on landscapes. Main changes are to urban areas and to abandoned land. However as the classification of original datasets (Mücher and EURURALIS) differs, it influences the analyzed results.
As the EURURALIS results can not be fully used in predicting landscape changes, the use of other alternative projects is proposed. One of them is BIOPRESS, which is prepared for selected transects and windows in the territory of European Union. BIOPRESS analyses main land use changes between years 1950 and 2000. However the results are only available for transects in the Netherlands, so the usefulness in the landscape studies can not be fully stated.