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Persistence in cultural landscapes: a pan-European analysis

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Abstract

Persistence in landscapes is determined by land cover types that remain unchanged over a certain period of time. Mapping and analyzing landscape persistence brings a new view to landscape-ecological research. Insights on processes, factors, or driving forces stabilizing landscapes can contribute to protect and manage valuable landscapes in a rapidly changing world. We analyzed and compared landscape persistence in Europe (EU27 plus Switzerland), as well as in six case studies using historical maps which were harmonized regarding their thematic, spatial, and temporal resolution. The spatial resolution was adjusted to the resolution of the least detailed case study map. To get a thematically harmonized map set, the legend classes were assigned to a common map legend. For enabling a thorough comparison, a persistence index has been developed, taking onto account differences in size of the study regions and in timing of the available historical maps. The persistence index is expressed in number of years that would be needed for the complete transformation of the land cover in a considered area if the transformation would occur at the same rate as it occurred in the considered time period. For the whole area of Europe, the persistence index is 198 years. However, change is not happening uniformly across Europe: the persistence hotspots are located in the Alps, north and south Italy, north Ireland, Sweden, south Finland, Romania, and UK where the persistence index is higher than 500 years. There is a variation between the persistence of different land cover types as well. Natural rocks, quarries, and beaches are fully persistent. Settlements and forests are highly persistent. Least persistent are grasslands and croplands, except olive groves.

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Acknowledgements

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program under Grant Agreement No. 603447 (Project HERCULES), from the Slovak Research and Development Agency (No. APVV-0866-12, “Evaluation of ecosystem functions and services of the cultural landscape”) and from the grant project of the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic and the Slovak Academy of Sciences (VEGA 2/0063/15). This research contributes to the Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (www.pecs-science.org) and the Global Land Project (www.globallandproject.org). The authors would like to express the gratitude to editors of Regional Environmental Change journal and to two anonymous revivers for the thorough review of the article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Landscape Ecology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Akademická 2, 949 01, Nitra, Slovakia

    Juraj Lieskovský

  2. Research Unit Landscape Dynamics, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Zürcherstrasse 111, CH-8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Matthias Bürgi

Authors
  1. Juraj Lieskovský
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  2. Matthias Bürgi
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Correspondence to Juraj Lieskovský.

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Editor: Erica Smithwick.

Electronic supplementary material

Online resource 1

Average age of current land cover (left) in Europe (based on Fuchs et al. 2013). For each grid cell the average age was calculated as the average age of current land cover in 50 km radius circle. (TIFF 92 kb)

High resolution image (GIF 83 kb)

Online resource 2

Average number of land cover changes in Europe (based on Fuchs et al. 2013). For each grid cell the number of changes was calculated as the average number of land-cover changes in 50 km radius circle. (TIFF 95 kb)

High resolution image (GIF 84 kb)

Online resource 3

Percentage of the unchanged first mapped land cover of the case study areas (bottom axes: years, left axes percentage of persistence) (DOCX 281 kb)

Online resource 4

Historical and current land cover of the case study areas (left or up: land cover from the first mapped period; right or down: age current land cover) (TIFF 888 kb)

High resolution image (GIF 391 kb)

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Lieskovský, J., Bürgi, M. Persistence in cultural landscapes: a pan-European analysis. Reg Environ Change 18, 175–187 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-017-1192-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-017-1192-7

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