Land Use Changes and Landscape Degradation in Central and Eastern Europe in the Last Decades: Epigeic Invertebrates as Bioindicators of Landscape Changes

Abstract We investigated the mechanisms involved in the relationship between land-use changes and aquatic biodiversity, using stream fish assemblages of the Brazilian Savanna (i.e., Cerrado) as a study model. We tested the prediction that landscape degradation would decrease environmental heterogeneity and change predominant physical-habitat types, which in turn would decrease the functional diversity and alter the functional identity of fish assemblages. We sampled fish from 40 streams in the Upper Paraná River basin, and assessed catchment and instream conditions. We then conducted an ecomorphological analysis to functionally characterize all species (36) and quantify different facets of the functional structure of assemblages. We detected multiple pathways of the impacts from landscape changes on the fish assemblages. Catchment degradation reduced the stream-bed complexity and the heterogeneity of canopy shading, decreasing assemblage functional specialization and divergence. Landscape changes also reduced the water volume and the amount of large rocks in streams, resulting in decreased abundances of species with large bodies and with morphological traits that favor swimming in the water column. We conclude that land-use intensification caused significant changes in aquatic biodiversity in the Cerrado, reinforcing the need to pay special attention to this global hotspot.

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Putting the Tree Back into the Landscape

The Lost Woodlands of Ancient Nasca ◽

10.5871/bacad/9780197264768.003.0010 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

David Beresford-Jones

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Land Use Changes ◽

Keystone Species ◽

South Coast ◽

Desert Ecosystem ◽

Landscape Changes ◽

The South

This book began with the archaeology of the Ullujaya and Samaca basins of the lower Ica Valley on the south coast of Peru. The archaeological investigations described here were undertaken to answer the following questions. Were these basins ever significantly more productive and vegetated landscapes? If so, when and how did change take place, and why? And how did these ecological and landscape changes correlate with cultural ones? The second part of the book conducted a thorough review of the botanical and agroforestry literature, together with the researchers' own observations, on the ecological keystone species of the region, the huarango — a tree of the genus Prosopis — to show how important a role this genus plays in the desert ecosystem of the south coast of Peru. This concluding chapter seeks to achieve a synthesis between these two parts to offer answers to those aforementioned questions posed by today's austere landscape of the lower Ica Valley. In so doing, it proposes a model for geomorphological, ecological, and land-use changes through time for the basins of the lower Ica Valley. It also aims to relate this model to cultural trajectories.

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Harper, Prof. Fred, (born 7 June 1947), educational consultant, Central and Eastern Europe, since 1997; Dean, Seale-Hayne Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Land Use, University of Plymouth (formerly Plymouth Polytechnic), 1989–97, now Emeritus Professor of Agriculture

10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u19104 ◽

2007 ◽

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Eastern Europe ◽

Central And Eastern Europe ◽

Emeritus Professor

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Harper, Prof. Fred, (born 7 June 1947), educational consultant, Central and Eastern Europe, since 1997; Dean, Seale-Hayne Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Land Use, University of Plymouth (formerly Plymouth Polytechnic), 1989–97, now Emeritus Professor of Agriculture

10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.19104 ◽

2007 ◽

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Eastern Europe ◽

Central And Eastern Europe ◽

Emeritus Professor

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Land-Use Dynamics in Transport-Impacted Urban Fabric: A Case Study of Martin–Vrútky, Slovakia

Land ◽

10.3390/land9080273 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (8) ◽

pp. 273

Author(s):

Jana Nozdrovická ◽

Ivo Dostál ◽

František Petrovič ◽

Imrich Jakab ◽

Marek Havlíček ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Land Use Changes ◽

Road Transport ◽

Transport Infrastructure ◽

Landscape Changes ◽

The Past ◽

The City ◽

The Town ◽

Past Conditions

The paper evaluates landscape development, land-use changes, and transport infrastructure variations in the city of Martin and the town of Vrútky, Slovakia, over the past 70 years. It focuses on analyses of the landscape structures characterizing the study area in several time periods (1949, 1970, 1993, 2003); the past conditions are then compared with the relevant current structure (2018). Special attention is paid to the evolution of the landscape elements forming the transport infrastructure. The development and progressive changes in traffic intensities are presented in view of the resulting impact on the formation of the landscape structure. The research data confirm the importance of transport as a force determining landscape changes, and they indicate that while railroad accessibility embodied a crucial factor up to the 1970s, the more recent decades were characterized by a gradual shift to road transport.

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Mapping and assessment of future land use change impacts on habitat quality in Lithuania

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3267 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Paulo Pereira ◽

Eduardo Gomes ◽

Miguel Inacio ◽

Katarzyna Bogdzevič ◽

Donalda Karnauskaite ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Habitat Quality ◽

Agricultural Intensification ◽

Land Use Changes ◽

Land Abandonment ◽

Comparison Function ◽

Invest Model ◽

Landscape Degradation ◽

Social Fund

AbstractHuman activity is directly responsible for land use and land cover changes, affecting different ecosystem services. Thus, from the perspective of land use management is critical to project potential future land-use changes. This study aimed: (i) to detect possible changes in land-use structure in response to different four scenarios, namely: business as usual, urbanization, afforestation and land abandonment, and agricultural intensification scenario; and (ii) to measure the landscape habitat quality (an ecosystem services proxy) according to those projected futures. We selected as case study Lithuania due to the potential future increased human pressures on the landscape, and due to the high landscape value of this territory. The projected year was 2050, and we used the Cellular Automata method (applying the Dinamica EGO software) to project future land-use changes, and the InVEST model to assess the habitat quality. The land-use scenarios outcomes were validated using a fuzzy comparison function, and 80% of accuracy was achieved (comparing a simulated land use map of 2018, and the observed map for the same year). The results showed that the agricultural intensification scenario represents the greatest predicted landscape deterioration (from 0.71 in 2018 to 0.64). In the urbanization scenario, the highest landscape degradation prediction is identified around the most important cities (Vilnius, Kaunas, and Klaip&#279;da). In the opposite direction, the afforestation and land abandonment scenario show the highest improvement on the habitat quality, from 0.71 in 2018 to 0.74.&#160;Acknowledgements&#8220;Lithuanian National Ecosystem Services Assessment and Mapping (LINESAM)&#8221; No. 09.3.3-LMT-K-712-01-0104 is funded by the European Social Fund according to the activity &#8220;Improvement of researchers&#8217; qualification by implementing world-class R&D projects&#8221; of Measure No. 09.3.3-LMT-K-712.

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Spatial Analysis for Landscape Changes

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app112411924 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (24) ◽

pp. 11924

Author(s):

Dario Gioia ◽

Maria Danese

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Spatial Analysis ◽

Land Use Changes ◽

Strong Impact ◽

Landscape Changes ◽

Landscape Modification ◽

Extreme Climate Events ◽

Extreme Climate ◽

Increasing Trends ◽

Climate Events

Landscape is the backcloth over which environmental and anthropic events occur, and recent increasing trends of natural and anthropic processes, such as urbanization, land-use changes, and extreme climate events, have a strong impact on landscape modification [...]

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Land-Use Changes and Their Relationships to Selected Landscape Parameters in Three Cadastral Areas in Moravia (Czech Republic)

Moravian Geographical Reports ◽

10.2478/mgr-2013-0004 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 41-50 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Zdeněk Opršal ◽

Bořivoj Šarapatka ◽

Petr Kladivo

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Czech Republic ◽

Land Use Changes ◽

Rural Landscape ◽

Landscape Changes ◽

Natural Conditions ◽

Natural Factors ◽

Gis Tools ◽

Landscape Character ◽

Topographic Heterogeneity

Abstract The analysis of changes in landscape use and the related significance of some natural factors is examined in this paper, using three municipal cadastral areas in Moravia, Czech Republic. The relationships between changes in the use of the rural landscape and natural conditions were analyzed with the use of GIS tools and methods of canonical correspondence analysis (CCA). The CCA results showed a correlation between the selected natural factors and landscape changes, with the most significant factors being those of slope and altitude. The CCA models exhibited varying reliability in accounting for the extent of landscape changes related to topographical diversity of the territories. Natural conditions were more influential in periods with lower change dynamics and at the same time in areas with higher topographic heterogeneity. Although the results of the statistical analyses confirmed the significance of natural factors, only a part of land use changes could be explained by their influence. Socio-economic factors are apparently the main forces affecting landscape character and change

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