Session Information
| Session | Poster Session | | Date | Monday (2008-04-07) | | Time | 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM | | Room | Grand Terrace |
Presentation Information
| Presenter | Martin Balej | | Title | Landscape memory: Continuity and discontinuity in landscape development trajectories (case study from Czech-German borderland) | | Affiliation | Department of Geography, J E Purkinje University | | Authors | Martin Balej, Tomas Orsulak | | Keywords | Czech-German borderland, Land use change, Landscape planning, Landscape trajectories | | Presentation Type | Poster | Abstract:
The poster presentation focuses on land-use change assessment of a rural landscape in the Czech-German borderland during the last 250 years. At the beginning, natural determinations dominated. Landscape function and composition was connected with farmers’ activities, and with prevailing multi-functional land uses (crop, animal production, forestry, recreational function). Due to the great famine (in 1771-72) and Joseph’s reforms, arable lands were increased. The industrial period (1850-1949) was connected with the urbanization process, with intensifying industrial activities and decreasing agricultural employment. The population in the study areas was stable. The period concluded with a crucial break of continual development trajectory. After the deportation of the German inhabitants, the landscapes and towns remained permanently abandoned (ghost towns grown up). The communist period (1950-1989) was characterized by the establishment taking over private businesses and land (a process of so-called collectivisation). Landscape composition was unified; balks, coppices, and lots of minor cultural, historical and church objects were erased. Landscape development culminated into ecological crisis. In the postindustrial period (after 1990), the market economy substitutes for central planning, and a change from one-sided exploitation of natural sources towards a strategy of sustainable development is adopted. |
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