INVESTIGATING THE LINK BETWEEN SOIL QUALITY AND AGRICULTURAL LAND USE CHANGE. A CASE STUDY IN THE LAKE BALATON CATCHMENT, HUNGARY - Carpathian Journal of Earth And Environmental Sciences

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Peter SZILASSI¹, Gyozo JORDAN², Ferenc KOVACS¹, Anton Van ROMPAEY³ & Wim Van DESSEL³
¹University of Szeged Department of Physical Geography and Geoinformatics, 6722 Egyetem 2, Szeged, Hungary e-mail: toto@jgypk.u-szeged.hu
²Geological Institute of Hungary,114, Stefánia 14, Budapest, Hungary
³KU Leuven, 3001 Haverlee Celestijnenlaan 200E, Leuven Belgium

INVESTIGATING THE LINK BETWEEN SOIL QUALITY AND AGRICULTURAL LAND USE CHANGE. A CASE STUDY IN THE LAKE BALATON CATCHMENT, HUNGARY

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Abstract: The social, political and economical driving forces behind land use change in Central and Eastern European countries, such as land privatisation and EU-membership are well documented. However, there are few studies that examine the possible role of environmental characteristics such as soil quality in land use change, and most of these studies keep a marginal importance of the environmental factors on the land use change. The objective of this study is to investigate the regional scale relationship between soil quality and land use change before (1981-1990), during (1990-2000), and after (2000-2006) the land privatisation in Hungary. The Lake Balaton catchment was selected as a study area for such analysis because of its rapidly changing historic landscapes which are well-documented in terms of data availability. Historic land use data were obtained from military topographic maps (1981), CORINE land cover maps (1990, 2000) and satellite images (2006) at 1:100,000 scale. The National Soil Quality Evaluation System (NSES) is used for representing soil quality by ‘soil quality scores’ that lump various soil parameters such as organic matter content, soil texture and erosion level, derived from regional soil mapping. GIS methods were used to analyse, verify and evaluate soil quality and it is connection with the agricultural land use change. Results of this study show that soil quality has a relevant role in shaping rural landscape patterns in Hungary. It is demonstrated that the soil quality acts as a location factor in the case of arable land use change between 1981-1990. In this period, arable lands have been moved to areas where the best soils were found. Models that are used to predict future land use changes should therefore take into account the change patterns (arable land migration) described in this paper. Results also show that spatial land use change can be linked to the pattern of the complex NSES soil quality scoring systems.

Keyword: land use change, land use management, land privatisation, soil quality, soil evaluation system, rural landscape