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Land cover composition determinants in the Uckermark (NE Germany) over a 220-year period

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Abstract

There is broad consensus that land use/cover has changed in central Europe over millennia. However, few studies have addressed the roles of the anthropogenic (socio-economic) and natural (biophysical) factors driving these changes over shorter periods (e.g., 100 years). In this study, we analyse the determinants of land cover composition at three discrete time periods (c. 1780, 1890, and 2000). We hypothesise that different anthropogenic and natural factors are the determinants of the main land cover types (arable fields, grasslands, and forests) and that the effects of natural and anthropogenic factors on the main land cover types differ among landscapes with highly dynamic and more stable forest-open land distributions. The study was carried out in the Uckermark region located in northeastern Germany. We compiled data on natural and anthropogenic factors (e.g. forest cover and number of inhabitants) of 65 municipalities in four landscape sections of equal size (10 × 10 km). Landscape sections were selected to reflect different dynamics (high/low) in conversion from forest to arable fields or grasslands and vice versa from 1780 to 2000. Averaged linear mixed-effect models explained between 7.5 and 81.2 % of the variance. The unique effect of anthropogenic factors varied from 2.1 to 18.7 % and that of natural factors varied from 0.2 to 43.4 %. In four of six models that included both types of factors, the natural factors were more influential than the anthropogenic factors. Except in three cases, anthropogenic and natural factors showed opposite effects on land cover types in more dynamic and more stable windows. Though the Uckermark region has been influenced by human activity for thousands of years, natural factors were a major determinant of land cover composition during all time periods, whereas anthropogenic factors became more important only during the latest time period under investigation.

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Acknowledgments

The research was supported through basic funds in equal parts by the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMELV) and by the Ministry for Science, Research and Culture of the State of Brandenburg (MWFK). We thank Ralf Wieland for running the models on a server with high processing power. The authors would like to thank two anonymous referee and Erica Smithwick for their thorough reviews and highly appreciate the comments and suggestions, which significantly contributed to improving the quality of the publication. Furthermore, we thank American Journal Experts for polishing our English.

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  1. Department of Land Use Systems, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Research (ZALF), Eberswalder Straße 84, 15374, Müncheberg, Germany

    Monika Wulf, Ute Jahn & Kristin Meier

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  1. Monika Wulf
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  2. Ute Jahn
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  3. Kristin Meier
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Correspondence to Monika Wulf.

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Editor: Erica Smithwick.

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Wulf, M., Jahn, U. & Meier, K. Land cover composition determinants in the Uckermark (NE Germany) over a 220-year period. Reg Environ Change 16, 1793–1805 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-016-0930-6

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