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Land use changes
and environmental stress accounting (case study from
northwestern part of the Czech-German borderland)
Martin Balej and Jiří Anděl
Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, J E Purkinje
University, Ceske mladeze 8, Usti nad Labem, 40096, Czech
Republic.
*Corresponding author. E-mail:
balej@sci.ujep.cz
Accepted 17th July, 2008 |
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The authors assess the long-term changes in utilisation of
the territory (1845 - 2005). They apply a new methodology
called environmental stress accounting. They notice
qualitative changes in how utilisation of the territory
develops. They assess the stress-causing effects on both the
natural subsystem (ecological stress) as well as on the
social subsystem (social stress). The aggregate result is a
methodology measuring environmental stress, as a sum of
stress existing in the natural and social subsystem. The
methodology can be applied in a randomly chosen territory at
various time scales. It reflects the external spatial
relations, i.e. relations with localities beyond the model
territory, and indicates causal effects (driving forces).
Driving forces directly or indirectly affect the structure
and function of the landscape and at the same time the
landscape can retroactively be one of the impulses for
origination and modification of the given driving force. The
process of mutual interaction of driving forces and the
landscape is monitored in three different landscape types of
the Czech-German border area: 1) “mining landscape”, 2)
“intensive agriculture” and 3) “highland marginal
landscape”. We analyse changes in the use of the landscape
and the trend in environmental stress in four time phases
that are mutually differentiated by their specific
characteristics. They generally correspond to stages of
change in Czech society: pre-industrial, industrial,
totalitarian (final phase of the industrial period) and
post-industrial period.
Key words:
Environmental stress, land use changes, driving forces,
Czech-German borderland. |
