Continuity and Extinction of Agricultural Land in the Sudetes - A Case Study in the Landscape of Highlands and Mountains

Abstract

The Sudetenland has undergone a dramatic development in Czechia. Above all, the frontier regions of the then Czechoslovakia lost due to the decision on the displacement of the Sudeten Germans in 1945 almost 3 million native inhabitants, who left their settlement areas in several waves by 1947. This change affected up to 3 million hectares of agricultural land that became the state property. This had in many places eliminated the traditional way of farming and the disruption of ownership relations consequently led to the breaking of relations in the landscape. This case study focuses on the comparison of the development of the agricultural landscape of 4 selected cadastral areas on the border of Krkonoše and Jizera Mountains from the post-war period to the present. Selected areas of interest are pairs of comparable cadastres from areas affected by the displacement of the local German population and areas with a permanent population structure. This four sites covering a total area of 4052 ha were studied in Cool Landscape of Highlands and the Moderately Cold Landscape of Mountains. Historical and contemporary land-cover information was provided by aerial photographic images from 1953/1954 and aerial orto-photos from 1998 and 2015/2016. The results have shown that on all four of the areas there was a noticeable increase in forests on former agricultural land. However, the monitored areas differ in the continuity of agricultural land. Continuous agricultural land represents, in both areas affected by post-war displacement, approximately 55 % of the original agricultural land. Areas with a well-preserved population structure, on the other hand, show an overall continuity of agricultural land on about 71 % of the former area of agricultural land.

On the Interplay of Ownership Patterns, Biodiversity, and Conservation in Past and Present Temperate Forest Landscapes of Europe and North America

“…1), forest ownership patterns and thereby ownership continuity underwent large changes caused by collectivization in those European countries with socialist governments [75,[87][88][89]. Furthermore, expropriation after the Second World War resulted in widespread nationalization of forests and natural oldfield succession on abandoned former private farmland [63,90,91]. In particular, centralized and intensified forestry in socialist countries caused homogenization of both stand structures and tree species composition, the latter with an emphasis on conifers [87][88][89].…”

Analysis of spatiotemporal changes of agricultural land after the Second World War in Czechia

“…As this study focuses on agricultural land, vectorisation was not performed in the entire studied territory, but only in areas with agricultural land present in 2018 or 1953. Similar approaches were taken in other studies such as Forejt et al 39 , Demková and Lipský 38 , and Zelinka 33 . A spatiotemporal analysis of changes was performed in ArcGIS 10.6 using the overlay analysis tool Itersect 34 .…”

“…This research builds on the results of a study conducted in rural areas of higher altitudes in 2017 33 . The comparative study carried out in 2017 at higher altitudes of Czechia indicated large differences in the overgrowth of agricultural land by forests in the depopulated areas and in the areas that remained settled.…”