Mapping Mature Post-Agricultural Forests in the Polish Eastern Carpathians with Archival Remote Sensing Data

Jabs-Sobocińska, Zofia; Affek, Andrzej; Ewiak, I.; Niţă, M. D.

doi:10.3390/rs13102018

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…As the mission of CORONA was to provide images, especially of the Soviet Union and China [51], these two countries were featured in most LULC studies in which CORONA data were used. Our results showed that except for present-day Russia and China, CORONA imagery was also commonly used in India and Nepal; the Middle East (Iraq, Iran and Syria); Northern and Western Africa (Egypt, Mali and Senegal); and Central and Eastern Europe (Poland and Romania) [26,28,30,[42][43][44][52][53][54][55][56][57][58]. Some of these countries (e.g., Poland and Romania) have good coverage of CORONA imagery due to the goals of the program and the importance of the countries during the Cold War era [59][60][61].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

“…Due to the availability of CORONA imagery since 1995, many researchers used the data to study various environmental processes [23], for instance, past land cover in the Caucasus Mountains [24], forest habitat fragmentation in the Bucegi Mountains, Romania [25], and post-agricultural forest succession in the Carpathian mountains [26]. In many studies, CORONA images were used jointly with other geospatial data to assess changes in land use and land cover (LULC) since the 1960s [27,28], with several studies reporting substantial difficulties when processing the data [6,29,30].…”

Section: Satellite and Camera Time Period Resolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Using CORONA Imagery to Study Land Use and Land Cover Change—A Review of Applications

2023

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CORONA spy satellites offer high spatial resolution imagery acquired in the 1960s and early 1970s and declassified in 1995, and they have been used in various scientific fields, such as archaeology, geomorphology, geology, and land change research. The images are panchromatic but contain many details of objects on the land surface due to their high spatial resolution. This systematic review aims to stud the use of CORONA imagery in land use and land cover change (LULC) research. Based on a set of queries conducted on the SCOPUS database, we identified and examined 54 research papers using such data in their study of LULC. Our analysis considered case-study area distributions, LULC classes and LULC changes, as well as the methods and types of geospatial data used alongside CORONA data. While the use of CORONA images has increased over time, their potential has not been fully explored due to difficulties in processing CORONA images. In most cases, study areas are small and below 5000 km2 because of the reported drawbacks related to data acquisition frequency, data quality and analysis. While CORONA imagery allows analyzing built-up areas, infrastructure and individual buildings due to its high spatial resolution and initial mission design, in LULC studies, researchers use the data mostly to study forests. In most case studies, CORONA imagery was used to extend the study period into the 1960s, with only some examples of using CORONA alongside older historical data. Our analysis proves that in order to detect LULC changes, CORONA can be compared with various contemporary geospatial data, particularly high and very high-resolution satellite imagery, as well as aerial imagery.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Satellite and Camera Time Period Resolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using CORONA Imagery to Study Land Use and Land Cover Change—A Review of Applications

2023

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“…Using CORONA data to backdate historical topographic maps allowed to extend a study period, providing high accuracy map for analyzing forest pattern and a better understanding of the ALA process and its consequences. As, except for aerial imagery, there is no other high-resolution imagery for the region, CORONA offers the potential of determining the intensity of ALA over the long-term in the entire region due to its accessibility and coverage [55,56]. While this study used time-consuming manual vectorization and geo-referencing of the CORONA images, several studies offer new tools and methods that may accelerate processing of the CORONA data into useful land cover products [31,57].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Substantial Increase of Forest Cover in Central Poland Following Extensive Land Abandonment: Szydłowiec County Case Study

2022

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Nowadays, Poland is one of the European countries most affected by agricultural land abandonment (ALA). Though considered to be a negative phenomenon, ALA opens up several options for planning future land uses critical for biodiversity conservation or future carbon sequestration. So far, many studies of ALA have been done in the mountainous areas in Poland, but less is known about the magnitude of ALA in other regions. In this paper we use the declassified CORONA satellite imagery (1969) to backdate the information on land cover and land abandonment from topographic maps from 1970s for the region located in central Poland and currently affected by widespread ALA. The information from archival materials is compared with current High-Resolution Layers and airborne laser scanning products, indicating that a forest cover increase of 23% was observed. The output of vegetation height analysis confirmed significant land use transformation from non-forest and ALA into forest area. Additionally, analysis of forest pattern change revealed that although forest core areas have increased since 1970, its share in total forest cover decreased due to newly established small forest patches. Our research shows the importance of archival remote sensing materials and indicates their role in understanding ALA-related forest cover change in Poland over the last 50 years.

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“…Since the early 1930s, aerial photographs have been systematically collected (Pinto et al, 2019), whereas civilian and commercial satellite images with increasingly higher resolution are available since the 1970s (Belward & Skøien, 2015). Both of these data sources have been extensively used to approach past cultural landscapes in mountainous regions (Jabs‐Sobocińska et al, 2021; Malek et al, 2014; Millican et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The use of LiDAR in reconstructing the pre‐World War II landscapes of abandoned mountain villages in southern Poland

Affek

Wolski

Latocha

et al. 2021

Archaeological Prospection

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The cessation of most human activities resulting from post-World War II expulsions and forced displacements in Central Europe triggered massive land cover transformation in mountainous areas. However, many pre-War traces of past landscapes have survived-imprinted in microtopography-in permanently abandoned villages. Currently, they constitute unique cultural heritage of communities no longer in existence.Our main goal was therefore to reconstruct a lost cultural landscape of mountain villages abandoned after World War II (WWII). The case study area comprised three such villages located in southern Poland, two in the Carpathians and one in the Sudetes. We used the national airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) dataset combined with archival cadastral maps and field survey to detect man-made microtopographic features related to past boundaries, road network, agriculture and buildings and to interpret them in the landscape context. We demonstrated that the pre-War human footprint left in relief was shaped largely by past landownership divisions, land use and environmental constraints (related to lithology, soils and topography). Our secondary goal was to assess the value and application opportunities of LiDAR in reconstructing past landscapes. We showed that 38-70% of non-natural parcel boundaries and 65-79% of roads marked on mid-19th-century cadastral maps are still detectable using LiDAR. Therefore, we argue that the past landscape pattern, originating in late Middle Ages and subsequently transformed prior to WWII, remains well preserved in the relief and that LiDAR is an effective tool to reconstruct a past landscape of mountain villages abandoned after WWII. We also confirmed that customized LiDAR visualizations are more informative than ready-to-use shaded digital elevation models (DEMs), in particular when integrated with cadastral and field-based data. We conclude that the greatest advantage of LiDAR is the capacity to provide a landscape context for isolated traces of past human activity, allowing for the reconstruction of entire spatial patterns and interrelationships developed by past societies.

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Mapping Mature Post-Agricultural Forests in the Polish Eastern Carpathians with Archival Remote Sensing Data

Cited by 10 publications

References 50 publications

Using CORONA Imagery to Study Land Use and Land Cover Change—A Review of Applications

Using CORONA Imagery to Study Land Use and Land Cover Change—A Review of Applications

The Substantial Increase of Forest Cover in Central Poland Following Extensive Land Abandonment: Szydłowiec County Case Study

The use of LiDAR in reconstructing the pre‐World War II landscapes of abandoned mountain villages in southern Poland

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