Chapter I 
Introduction

Chapter I:1  Changes in the earth system and the role of land use

↓1

Profound transformations in the earth system are becoming increasingly apparent from local to global scales (MEA, 2005). For example, the composition of the atmosphere is now considerably different from what it was centuries ago. The build-up of CO2 and methane leads to climate warming, changes the Earth’s air and water cycles, and ultimately threatens the basic functioning of the earth system (Steffen et al., 2004). There is now compelling evidence that global environmental change is largely due to the activities of people. Humans have altered most terrestrial ecosystems (Vitousek et al., 1997) and no place on the planet remains unaffected by human influence (Sanderson et al., 2002). More than 50% of natural ecosystems have been domesticated for direct human use (Kareiva et al., 2007), the majority of the world’s fisheries are overexploited and close to collapse (Worm et al., 2006), human activities cause global biodiversity decline at unprecedented rates (Pimm and Raven, 2000;Gaston, 2005), and today’s greenhouse gas levels are largely connected to population growth and increased economic activities during the last 150 years (Steffen et al., 2004).

At the same time, the consequences of these changes for ecosystems and people’s livelihoods are of growing concern (Steffen et al., 2004). There is increasing awareness about the complete dependence of humanity on the Earth’s ecosystems and the services they provide (e.g., food, water, disease management, climate regulation, or recreation potential), that many of these ecosystem services are highly vulnerable to changes in the earth system, and that a number of services are currently being used at unsustainable rates (MEA, 2005). Analyzing the human ecological footprint, the area of land needed to provide resource consumption in a sustainable way, revealed that current use of ecosystem services exceeds the Earth’s capacities by about 30% (Wackernagel et al., 2002). This is largely due to overexploitation and because ecosystems have been domesticated to maximize the provision of some services (e.g., food production) while others have been neglected (e.g., natural hazard mitigation) (Foley et al., 2005;Kareiva et al., 2007). Both, the alarming impact of human activities on the earth system and the enormous feedbacks of these changes for human well-being, underpin the need for a greatly improved understanding of the coupled human-environment system, and for including the human dimension as a basic element of the earth system (Turner II et al., 2003;Moran and Ostrom, 2005;Haberl et al., 2006).

People dwell on land and the vast majority of human activities focus on terrestrial ecosystems. The land sub-system is therefore central for studying how people interact with their environment, for understanding how these interactions relate to global environmental change, and for assessing the consequences of these interactions for ecosystem services and livelihoods (GLP, 2005;Lambin and Geist, 2006). Land use is defined as the purpose for which humans exploit the Earth’s surface (Turner II et al., 1995;Lambin et al., 2006). Land use change has become the primary driver of change in the earth system, either by converting natural landscapes for human purposes or by changing management practices in human-dominated landscapes (Foley et al., 2005;GLP, 2005). These changes have enabled the highly efficient provision of particular ecosystem services that are essential for humanity (e.g., food, fiber, shelter, freshwater,MEA, 2005). For instance, agricultural intensification and cropland expansion led to a huge increase of the world’s food production in the second half of the 20th century (Matson et al., 1997). Overall, humans have therefore benefited greatly from land use change. However, some land use changes also degrade the global environment, lead to the loss of other important ecosystem services, and potentially undermine the long-term capacity of ecosystems to provide services (Foley et al., 2005;Bennett and Balvanera, 2007). For example, land use played a major role in changing the global carbon cycle and has contributed to climate change (Houghton, 1999;Houghton and Goodale, 2004). Anthropogenic nutrient inputs from fertilizers and atmospheric pollutants have widespread effects on water quality in coastal and freshwater ecosystems (Matson et al., 1997;Bennett et al., 2001). Land use is also an important agent of land degradation and desertification (Reynolds and Stafford-Smith, 2002) and the destruction, modification, and fragmentation of habitat is the main cause for extinctions (Sala et al., 2000;Loreau et al., 2001). Moreover, changes in land use promote the spread of pests and diseases (Patz and Norris, 2004), and determine the resilience and vulnerability of places and people (Turner II et al., 2003;Kareiva et al., 2007).

↓2

Local land use decisions have therefore an increasing impact at the global level (Foley et al., 2005). However, the understanding of what drives these decisions is far from complete (GLP, 2005;Lambin and Geist, 2006). Saying this does not deny that there have been major advancements in unraveling the coupled human-environment system on the land (Gutman et al., 2004;Rindfuss et al., 2004). Two decades of land use change science have deepened the understanding of how land use decisions are made considerably, particularly by synthesizing from a large number of case studies (Geist and Lambin, 2002;Geist and Lambin, 2004;McConnell and Keys, 2005). Yet, these meta-analyses have also shown the complexity of land use decisions and led to the de-mystification of several over-simplistic paradigms. For instance, poverty and population growth were long thought to be the primary drivers of tropical deforestation, but macro-economic conditions, in-migration, or infrastructure development often outrank these factors, and drivers of tropical deforestation differ considerably among different regions in the world (Angelsen and Kaimowitz, 1999;Lambin et al., 2001). The richness of explanations of land use change has increased noticeably, mainly at the expense of the generality of these explanations (Lambin et al., 2006). Overall however, the understanding of the drivers of land use decisions still remains weak.

The problem is that local land use decisions are determined by a multitude of factors that themselves operate at a variety of often nested scales (Geoghegan et al., 2001;Lambin and Geist, 2006). These scales range from the level of local characteristics (e.g., soil fertility) and actors (e.g., individuals, households) to the level of global conditions (e.g., macro-economy, trade agreements) and decision makers (e.g., governments). Separating proximate causes of land use change from their underlying driving forces is a useful concept for understanding how these scales interact (Turner II et al., 1995;Geist et al., 2006). Proximate (or direct) causes generally operate at the local scale and include land use activities at a particular location (e.g., agricultural expansion, logging, or urbanization).

These activities themselves are constrained by underlying (or root) driving forces that determine the demand for specific land use activities. Some of these driving forces originate from the local level, for example fine-scale biophysical variability, household numbers, or local land use history (Pfaff, 1999;Geoghegan et al., 2001;Fox et al., 2002;Liu et al., 2003;Entwisle and Stern, 2006). However, the vast majority of underlying driving forces of land use decisions originate from the regional or global level, and include for example, demographic, socio-economic, political, institutional, technological, cultural, and broad-scale biophysical factors (Brookfield, 1999;Geist et al., 2006). These broad-scale conditions constitute the framework for local land use decisions. Moreover, changes in broad-scale boundary conditions frequently result in changing demand for land use activities, thus influencing proximate causes at the local scale, which in turn triggers land use change and ecosystem dynamics (Geist et al., 2006, Figure I-1).

↓3

This relationship is relatively well-studied at a general level and a number of studies have demonstrated the paramount importance of broad-scale boundary conditions for local land use decisions (Dietz et al., 2003;Tucker and Ostrom, 2005;Geist et al., 2006). For example, institutions and policies exert a huge influence on people’s land use decisions through subsidies, land management policies, or property rights, to name only a few (Kaimowitz et al., 1999;Mertens et al., 2000;Sunderlin et al., 2001). However, separating out the effects of specific underlying drivers or assessing the importance of different broad-scale driving forces relative to each other is challenging, and the understanding of how changes in broad-scale conditions affect rates and spatial patterns of land use change is weak (GLP, 2005). This lack of understanding is mainly because broad-scale factors are often constant or change only gradually at the time scales commonly studied (i.e., a couple of years or decades), and altering the framework of broad-scale factors experimentally is not feasible.

Figure I1: Simplified scheme of scale-dependency in land use decision making and the impacts of land use change on ecosystems. Underlying drivers of land use change operate at different scales and influence land use decision at the local level. This controls proximate causes which in turn affect ecosystems. Local processes may have strong global impacts when aggregated.

Sudden and drastic changes in broad-scale political, economical, or societal conditions (e.g., revolutions, economic collapse) are overall relatively rare. However, studying land use change in regions where such abrupt changes occur offers unique opportunities to advance understanding of the role of broad-scale factors for land use decisions. Such situations where some broad-scale conditions vary, but other potential land use determinants remain relatively constant may be interpreted as “natural experiments” (sensu,Diamond, 2001;Geist et al., 2006). This allows for isolating the effect of the varying factors (e.g., institutional change), because observed land use changes can be attributed to the change in broad-scale conditions.

↓4

Natural experiments are particularly interesting when comparing the rates and spatial patterns of land use change across borders in environmentally homogeneous regions. Differences in land use change among countries are in such regions likely a result of dissimilar political, socioeconomic, or institutional boundary conditions. Very few studies used these kinds of setups to assess the underlying drivers of land use change. For example, deforestation differed substantially among countries in a Columbian-Ecuadorian border region, likely due to higher colonization pressures and intensification of illegal coca cultivation in Columbia (Vina et al., 2004). Likewise, land use change in the Kenyan part of the Mara ecosystem was more extensive than in the Tanzanian part, due to large-scale agricultural expansion triggered by new market opportunities in Kenya. This resulted in a collapse of the wildebeest population in the Kenyan part of the ecosystem, whereas Tanzanian herds remained largely unaffected (Serneels and Lambin, 2001). The few existing studies emphasize the potential of transborder comparisons to better understand the effect of broad-scale factors on land use change. Comparing land use change in border regions where natural experiments occur should therefore give important insights into the role of these factors for land use decisions, however, such comparisons have so far not been carried out.

Chapter I:2 Post-socialist land use change in Eastern Europe

The demise of the Soviet Union following the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 resulted in rapid and drastic changes in Eastern Europe’s political, societal, and economic structures (Longworth, 1997;Turnock, 1998). Democracy was introduced in most former socialist countries, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved in 1991, and far-reaching institutional reforms were issued across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Centralized planning economies transitioned towards free-market systems, and massive ownership transfers of natural resources and capital assets took place (Swinnen, 1997;Mathijs and Swinnen, 1998;Sikor, 2004). Old markets and trade agreements within the former Socialist Bloc diminished when the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) ceased to exist in 1991. Prices were liberalized, budget constraints were introduced, and new market opportunities were connected to a strong increase in outside competition, both from the West and from other former socialist countries (Turnock, 1998;Trzeciak-Duval, 1999). Moreover, the transition period also brought about rapid societal and demographic change, including massive internal and external migration movements, especially of younger population segments (Ioffe and Nefedova, 2001;UNESA, 2007).

These changes also affected land management policies and institutions, and altered the framework for land use decisions markedly, with an increasing emphasis on economic rather than political influences (Bicik et al., 2001). During socialism, the agricultural sector was reorganized and greatly intensified, which was often based on huge capital investments by the state and subsidies (e.g., guaranteed prices) (Turnock, 1998). This changed drastically after 1990, and the economic transition decreased the profitability of farming considerably, especially in marginal regions. Land management policies were revised and land reforms were carried out to privatize farmland and to individualize land use (Lerman et al., 2004).

↓5

Former common pool resources and infrastructure (e.g., irrigation systems) were often neglected and degraded (Penov, 2004;Sikor, 2004). Altogether, this resulted in widespread land use change in the post-socialist period, most notably the abandonment of vast areas of agricultural land, urbanization, increased logging, and farmland parcelization (i.e. subdivision of large fields into smaller ones) (Peterson and Aunap, 1998;Bicik et al., 2001;van Dijk, 2003;Lerman et al., 2004;Elbakidze and Angelstam, 2007). Thus, the political and economic transition that occurred in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is a prime example of a large-scale natural experiment that may help to better understand how changes in broad-scale underlying driving factors of land use decisions affect land use change.

Studying post-socialist land use change in Eastern Europe is also important for gathering basic information about the extent of these changes. Concerning land use change, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are clearly an understudied region. Although general land use trends since 1990 are acknowledged, little is known about the rates and spatial patterns of these trends (NEESPI, 2004;GLP, 2005). This is unfortunate because much is at stake. Eastern Europe still harbors vast areas of relatively wild landscapes with high nature conservation value and some of Europe’s last pristine ecosystems (Oszlanyi et al., 2004;Wesolowski, 2005). These treasures include wetland areas, for instance the Danube delta, primeval forests (e.g. Bialowieza Forest), the Carpathian mountain forest ecosystems, and the Caucasian mountain range; areas that harbor astonishing biodiversity, including hotspots of global significance (Olson and Dinerstein, 1998). Moreover, Eastern Europe and Russia also still have widespread cultural landscapes that have largely been lost in the West (Palang et al., 2006;Elbakidze and Angelstam, 2007).

During socialism, environmental resources were mainly seen as an engine of growth. Great efforts were made to industrialize the agricultural sector and to utilize Eastern Europe’s and Russia’s natural resources (Csaki, 2000;Oldfield, 2000). Private landownership ceased, farms were collectivized, and agriculture was intensified considerably. Forests were transformed into farmland, and logging rates were unsustainably high in many areas (Peterson, 1995;Csaki and Lerman, 1997;Nijnik and Van Kooten, 2000;Turnock, 2002). Overall, this resulted in considerable environmental problems, many of which persist today (Schrad, 2006). The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the transition from central command economies to free-market conditions reversed some of these trends (Peterson, 1995). The decreasing profitability of agriculture resulted in outmigration and farmland abandonment, and human pressure in rural areas has decreased in many areas after 1990. New land management policies considering the multifunctionality of landscapes were issued in many countries, for instance forestry codes promoting sustainable forestry (Kissling-Naf and Bisang, 2001). This provides opportunities for biodiversity and nature conservation, and for restoring some ecosystem services that were neglected under high-intensity land use regimes. For example, wildlife populations may benefit from decreasing human pressure in rural landscapes (Stephens et al., 2006), and abandoned farmland offers potential for increased carbon sequestration through afforestation of these lands (Nijnik, 2005).

↓6

Yet, the transition period was also characterized by weaker institutions, a lower level of control, economic depression, and the infrastructure for nature protection was partially eroded (Sobolev et al., 1995;Wells and Williams, 1998). In such situations, environmental conservation may be considerably neglected (GLP, 2005) and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have therefore been called “the last frontier for conservation” (Williams, 1996;Marcot et al., 1997). Privatization in a period of economic depression may have led to increased resource use, because new owners strived for rapid economic gain (Webster et al., 2001) and economic difficulties in the transition period may have led to increased illegal resource use (e.g., illegal logging,Nijnik and Van Kooten, 2000). In some areas human pressure on ecosystems, wildlife, and biodiversity increased considerably since 1990, for example due to poaching, infrastructure development, and oil and gas exploration (Vilchek and Bykova, 1992;Forbes, 1999;Ervin, 2003). As a result, several endemic flagship species have already experienced population collapse, for example saiga antelopes (declined from 1.1 million to 30,000 since 1990,Milner-Gulland et al., 2001), the European bison in the Caucasus (Pucek et al., 2004), and the Siberian tiger (Kerley et al., 2002;Carroll and Miquelle, 2006). Also, the persistence of Eastern Europe’s cultural landscapes and the biodiversity they harbor is seriously threatened by outmigration and land use extensification (Cremene et al., 2005;Baur et al., 2006). Overall, recent land use changes may pose both opportunities and serious threats for ecosystems and biodiversity in Eastern Europe. However, the consequences of these changes remain largely unknown.

Chapter I:3 The Carpathian Mountains

The Carpathian mountain range (Figure I-2) represents Europe’s largest temperate forest ecosystem and has remained relatively undisturbed compared to Western Europe. The region still harbors a relatively large percentage of natural and semi-natural forests and has exceptionally high levels of biodiversity, including many endangered and endemic species (Webster et al., 2001;Witkowski et al., 2003). For instance, over one-third of all European plant species are found in the Carpathians and much forest biodiversity connected to old-growth stands can still be found in the area (Perzanowski and Szwagrzyk, 2001).

Figure I2: Location of the Carpathian Mountains in Europe (altitudes range from approximately 50 to 2,650m, source: Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) Digital Elevation Model, ESRI Data and Maps Kit).

↓7

Being a bridge between Europe’s southwestern and southeastern forests, the Carpathians also serve as an important refuge and corridor for plants and animals (Webster et al., 2001). Moreover, the region provides habitat for large populations of several top herbivores and carnivores that have been extirpated in wide areas of Western Europe, for example brown bear (Ursus arctos), wolf (Canis lupus), lynx (Lynx lynx), wildcat (Felis sylvestris), and European bison (Bison bonasus) (Perzanowski and Szwagrzyk, 2001;Oszlanyi et al., 2004).

The Carpathians also provide important ecosystem services. For example, the region is an important carbon storage and Carpathian forests are characterized by high productivity (Nijnik and Van Kooten, 2000). Carpathian ecosystems are a major source of freshwater and several major rivers (e.g., Vistula, Dnister, Tisza, etc) originate in the region. The potential for recreation and ecotourism of the area is considerable (Webster et al., 2001;Turnock, 2002). Moreover, traditional cultural landscapes still widely exist in the Carpathians, whereas they have mostly been lost in the West during the second half of the 20th century. These landscapes, characterized by low-intensity land use, are rich in farmland biodiversity (Donald et al., 2002;Palang et al., 2006;Elbakidze and Angelstam, 2007). However, despite the Carpathian’s significance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, surprisingly little is known about their fate in the post-socialist period, and rates and spatial patterns of land use changes in the region remain largely unclear. Moreover, several protected areas were established in the post-socialist period to guard Carpathian ecosystems and biodiversity. Yet, the question remains whether these reserves provided effective protection during a period of political, economic, and societal reorganization.

Despite the urgent need to quantify post-socialist land use change in the Carpathians, the region is also particularly well-suited for carrying out cross-border comparisons of land use change. The region is environmentally relatively homogeneous and constitutes a single ecoregion (Olson et al., 2001;Perzanowski and Szwagrzyk, 2001). Moreover, Carpathian countries have a long common history, as the region was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1772 until 1918 (Turnock, 2002;Augustyn, 2004). In this period, land management policies and land use practices were relatively uniform throughout the region. During socialism, most Carpathian countries adopted the general principles of socialist agriculture (e.g., land use intensification, collectivization, state-controlled agricultural sector) (Lerman, 2001). Yet, countries also differed markedly in terms of land ownership patterns and land use practices. After the system change in 1989, countries selected different transition strategies (e.g., land reforms) and took different economic and political pathways (Lerman et al., 2004). This provides unique opportunities for assessing the importance of different drivers of land use relative to each other, and for decoupling the effect of overall changes in the post-socialist period (e.g., worsening economic conditions) from country specific transformations (e.g., specific land ownership patterns or land reforms). Comparing post-socialist land use change among Carpathian countries may therefore reveal important insights into how changes in the framework of underlying factors of land use decisions results in land use change. However, no study to date carried out such comparisons among countries in the Carpathians or elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

Chapter I:4 Study Area & Research Questions

↓8

The two overarching goals of this thesis are to (I) compare post-socialist land use change across borders in the Carpathian Mountains to better understand the role of politics and socioeconomics for land use change, and (II) to assess the consequences of post-socialist land use change for Carpathian ecosystems.

As a study area, the border triangle of Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine in the Carpathians was selected, because land ownership and land management in socialist times as well as land reforms after 1990 differed markedly among the three countries (Table I-1). In Poland, collectivization failed and much farmland remained private. However, some areas were forcefully depopulated after border changes between Poland and the Soviet Union in 1947 (Turnock, 2002) and these lands were afforested or managed by state-farms (Angelstam et al., 2003;Augustyn, 2004). Slovak land owners retained their property rights, but all land was managed by state-controlled cooperatives. In Ukraine, all land was owned and managed by the state (Lerman et al., 2004). After the system change in 1990, the countries also adopted diverse land reform strategies to privatize farmland and to individualize land use. Whereas land was auctioned off in Poland, Slovakia chose to restitute land, and Ukraine distributed agricultural land among the former workers of the collectives (Table I-1).

Table I1: Land ownership patterns and privatization strategies of the countries in the study area (Source: Lerman et al. 2004, modified).

Country

Land management before 1990

Land ownership before 1990

Privatization strategy
after 1990

Farmland available for privatization

Forest land available for privatization

Land market after 1990

Poland

private
and state

private
and state

sell state land (plots)

all

little

Buy/sell,
lease

Slovakia

state

private

restitution (plots)

all

considerable

Buy/sell,
lease

Ukraine

state

state

distribution (shares)

all

little

Only lease
until 2005

↓9

Thus, the study area represents a sample of the three main land ownership and land management systems that existed during socialism (state-owned, collectivized, and private) and includes the three principal land reform strategies adopted after 1990 (selling of land, restitution of land, and distribution of land). This setting provides unique opportunities for better understanding post-socialist land use change and the role of broad-scale driving factors of land use decisions in general. Cross-border comparisons of land use change in the study area are particularly interesting, because the effect of specific ownership patterns and land reforms on land use trends can be separated from land use changes due to general developments in Eastern Europe.

Moreover, the study area is also of exceptional nature conservation value, because it harbors some of the Carpathians least disturbed forests, high biodiversity, and large populations of top carnivores and herbivores (Denisiuk and Stoyko, 2000;Perzanowski and Gula, 2002). The area is still rich in traditional cultural landscapes (Angelstam et al., 2003;Augustyn, 2004). Moreover, the study area contains several protected areas, including the trilateral Eastern Carpathians Biosphere Reserve with zones of increasing human pressure in all three countries (UNESCO, 2003). The area is therefore well-suited for assessing how post-socialist land use changes affected Carpathian ecosystems, and for studying the effectiveness of protected areas during a period of political, economic, and institutional change.

Carrying out cross-border comparison of land use change to address the above issues requires separating differences among countries due to socialist land management from those due to land use trends in the transition period. Different starting points for this separation are possible. In this thesis, a two-stage approach starting with contemporary land use is adopted: First, current land use and landscape configuration is quantified to assess differences among countries. Second, rates and spatial pattern of post-socialist land use change is measured to investigate the origin of differences among countries. These two stages translate into two specific central research questions:

↓10

Research question I: Do the Polish, Slovak, and Ukrainian regions of the study area differ in terms of contemporary land use and landscape pattern?

Quantifying the status quo is the foundation for comparing land use and landscape patterns among countries. The region has relatively homogeneous environmental conditions and a long common history as a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with uniform land management policies. Differences among countries are therefore likely a result of land use changes in either the socialist or the post-socialist period (or a combination thereof). Assessing land use change in the post-socialist period alone would overlook differences among countries that already existed at the time of the system change. Such differences are possible in the study area because socialistic land management differed substantially among the countries in the study area (Augustyn and Kozak, 1997;Turnock, 2002).

Research question II: What where the changes in land use in the post-socialist period and did land use change differ among the three countries in the study area?

↓11

Assessing the extent and spatial pattern of post-socialist land use change puts today’s land cover and landscape pattern among the three countries into the context of historic land management. If countries today differ in terms of land use and landscape pattern, comparing post-socialist land use change among them will reveal whether differences originate in the socialist or post-socialist period. Conversely, if landscapes in the three countries are relatively homogeneous today, quantifying post-socialist land use change will reveal whether this homogeneity is a result of the transition period, or if the countries have always been relatively similar. In other words, this stage assesses the question whether the three countries in the study area are converging or diverging in terms of land cover and landscape pattern since 1990. Moreover, cross-border comparisons of post-socialist land use changes also allows for addressing the fate of Carpathian ecosystems and the effectiveness of protected areas in the study area (the secondary goal of this thesis).

Chapter I:5 Approach & Specific Objectives

Answering the two research questions outlined above is challenging, because conventional datasets such as statistical data, agricultural censuses, cadastre data, or historic maps are of unknown reliability and are often unavailable, particularly from socialist times (Peterson and Aunap, 1998;Filer and Hanousek, 2002). An alternative is the use of remote sensing. Satellite images have long been a key resource for quantifying rates and spatial patterns of change in the land system (Rindfuss et al., 2004;Lambin and Geist, 2006). Images from the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) 4 and 5, and the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) instruments are particularly well-suited to assess land use change in Eastern Europe, because data from before and after 1990 exist. The sensors have a swath width of 185km, record data at a spatial resolution of 30m and in six spectral bands, have a 16-day repeat cycle, and a continuous data record since 1982 (Goward and Masek, 2001;Cohen and Goward, 2004). This allows for addressing land use change at the landscape scale with sufficiently high spatial detail to monitor change in Eastern Europe’s highly heterogeneous, fine-grain landscapes (Palang et al., 2006).

Satellite image analyses can track changes in land cover, i.e., the biogeophysical characteristics of the Earth’s surface. Land use, the purpose for which humans exploit land cover (Lambin et al., 2006), is usually not directly measurable based on remote sensing data. However, in human dominated landscapes and in the absence of natural disturbances, changes in land cover are likely the result of changes in land use. Monitoring changes in land cover and landscape pattern using satellite images may therefore serve as a proxy for land use change and may help to link landscape dynamics to its underlying driving forces (Fox et al., 2002;Rindfuss et al., 2004). The research summarized in this thesis, is based on monitoring changes in land cover and landscape pattern across borders using remote sensing image analysis. This allows for comparing post-socialist land use change among countries and to unravel the effect of land management policies, land ownership patterns, and institutional reforms on land use change.

↓12

The main objective relating to Research Question I was to

  1. quantify differences in land cover and landscape pattern among the Polish, Slovak, and Ukrainian region of the study area for the year 2000.
    Research Question II required three main objectives, each targeted at one specific land use change process in the post-socialist era. These objectives were to
  2. measure post-socialist forest change and to compare forest change among the countries in the study area,
  3. quantify post-socialist farmland abandonment and compare its rates and spatial pattern among countries,
  4. assess changes in land use pattern due to post-socialist land reforms and to investigate whether land use pattern differed among the three countries.

Chapter I:6 Structure of this thesis

This thesis is structured in four main sections (Chapter II-V) that each relate to one of the specific objectives outlined above. In Chapter II, differences in land cover and landscape pattern among the Polish, Slovak, and Ukrainian region of the study area were quantified. This was done using Landsat TM/ETM+ images from 2000 and a hybrid classification approach. The following three sections investigate whether differences among countries can be attributed to socialist or post-socialist land management, thereby answering the question whether countries converged or diverged in post-socialist times. Each of these three sections quantified a specific land use change process based on Landsat TM/ETM+ images from 1986-2000. In Chapter III, differences among countries in the rates and spatial patterns of forest change were assessed, along with a comparison of the effectiveness of protected areas in the study area. This was based on the forest disturbance index (Healey et al., 2005). Chapter IV presents results from the comparison of rates and spatial patterns of farmland abandonment in the study area, based on a support vector machines classification approach. Chapter V summarizes differences in land use patterns among the three countries. This was carried out using multiple regression models that related field size and texture measures from Landsat TM/ETM+ images. Finally, Chapter VI synthesizes the results of the four preceding chapters and provides directions for future research.

↓13

Chapters II – V were written as stand-alone manuscripts to be published in international peer-reviewed journals. Each chapter is therefore structured into the subsections background, study area, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions, thereby resulting in a limited amount of recurring material throughout the thesis. The four chapters were published or submitted as follows:

Chapter II: Kuemmerle, T., Radeloff, V.C., Perzanowski, K., and Hostert, P. (2006): Cross-border comparison of land cover and landscape pattern in Eastern Europe using a hybrid classification technique, Remote Sensing of Environment, 103:449-464

Chapter III: Kuemmerle, T., Hostert, P., Radeloff, V.C., Perzanowski, K, and Kruhlov, I. (2007): Post-socialist forest disturbance in the Carpathian border region of Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine, Ecological Applications, 17:1279–1295

↓14

Chapter IV: Kuemmerle, T., Hostert, P., Radeloff, V.C., van der Linden, S., Perzanowski, K, and Kruhlov, I. (2007): Post-socialist farmland abandonment in the Carpathian border region of Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine, Global Change Biology, submitted.

Chapter V: Kuemmerle, T., Hostert, P., St-Louis, V., and Radeloff, V.C. (2007): Using image texture to map field size in Eastern Europe, Journal of Land Use Science, submitted.

Two appendices supplement the material shown in Chapters II – VI. Appendix A extends the analyses described in Chapter V by using image texture in a segmentation-based multitemporal classification to map farmland parcelization. Appendix B details a method to correct single-band data distortions in Landsat TM/ETM+ images. Such distortions were frequent in the images used in this thesis and correcting these distortions was essential prior to quantifying land use change (Chapters III-V). Because no ready-to-use correction procedure existed, a correction algorithm was developed within the framework of this thesis. Both appendices were written as independent pieces of research. Appendix A was presented at a conference whereas appendix B was written for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The references for the appendices are:

↓15

Appendix A: Kuemmerle, T., Hostert, P., Schiller, T., and Radeloff, V.C. (2006): Mapping post-socialist parcelization of farmland in Eastern Europe using texture measures. In: Braun, M. (Ed) Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop of the EARSeL Special Interest Group on Remote Sensing of Land-Use & Land-Cover, 28th-20th September 2006, Bonn, Germany.

Appendix B: Kuemmerle, T., Damm, A., and Hostert, P. (2007): A method to detect and correct single-band missing pixels in Landsat TM and ETM+ data, Computers & Geosciences, in press


© Die inhaltliche Zusammenstellung und Aufmachung dieser Publikation sowie die elektronische Verarbeitung sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung, die nicht ausdrücklich vom Urheberrechtsgesetz zugelassen ist, bedarf der vorherigen Zustimmung. Das gilt insbesondere für die Vervielfältigung, die Bearbeitung und Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronische Systeme.
DiML DTD Version 4.0Zertifizierter Dokumentenserver
der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
HTML-Version erstellt am:
17.04.2008