Methodologies and prospects of historical land use/land cover studies in Lithuania

Abstract

The relevance and number of land use/land cover (LULC) studies have significantly increased over recent decades. Census, statistical and cartographic data represent the main information sources for researchers. Short-term LULC change studies are improving faster and are more numerous than the long-term ones. The aim of our study was to review the available methodology for assessing changes in LULC based on historical sources. Old maps are the tool for long-term LULC studies as they allow tracking all LULC changes. However, in Lithuania, old maps are not much exploited for this purpose, which can be explained by the fact that the findings obtained using old maps are not always worth the technical and time inputs required. Our analysis revealed that only a small part of studies into LULC in Lithuania deal with the identification and analysis of LULC change trajectories. Therefore, some methods for determining LULC change trajectories are overviewed in this article, too.

Automatic extraction of former WWI battlefields from ancient maps

“…Depending on the difference between the geodetic reference system used to draw the map to be georeferenced and the one of the reference map, the calculation of the appropriate transformation model can be tough 27 . Moreover, depending on the map-producers 21 , the available technical and financial means at the time when the historical maps were drawn 28 , the difficulties related to the area to map (e.g. mountainous terrain) 29 , or the purpose of the map (e.g.…”

“…land cover changes), and the state of preservation of historical maps (e.g. humidity that can crinkle paper or affect the drawings) may make the search of GCPs more complicated 28 , and thus impact the accuracy of the transformation model. Within this context, local transformation models were shown to produce more accurate results than global methods 31 .…”