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Abstract:

Since the mid-19th century, large surfaces of wetlands across Romania (over 1 000 000 hectares) were drained, resulting in productive lands. The aim of our study was to make a detailed analysis of the land use evolution of a Natura 2000 site of community importance from North-Eastern Romania over 100 years using both old maps and recent satellite images. In this approach we considered that although the old maps provide a primary historical source illustrating the character of the disappeared landscape structures and that the satellite images represents suitable sources for surveying the present state of land cover, they can not explain which are the drivers and mechanisms that led to the present land use configuration. Therefore, another aim of this research was the identifying of the factors that led to the landscape change taking into account another element beside the cartographic resources, when studying the land use evolution, the vegetation analysis. The historic cartographic maps and recent satellite images were digitised and analysed in relation with the historic vegetation data and recent vegetation study from the field to make a detailed analysis of the landscape evolution. Our results showed that in the last 60-70 years, the most important change has been the expansion of the agricultural surfaces and grasslands to the detriment of the wetlands, whose surface has been reduced by over 10 times during the mentioned period. The main drivers of these changes are related to agricultural development and pasture expansion, which are yet strongly related to natural factors (such as soil and climate characteristics). Our results showed that even though data from the old maps and the modern cartographic sources are very important tools for monitoring land use changes, they are not sufficient for a proper interpretation of the inner mechanism of landscape evolution. Combining historical and actual florist and phytocoenological studies with mapping tools provides better insights into the long-term evolution of landscape dynamics. This approach may be used to other Natura2000 sites and can provide the scientific basis for local and regional planning in order to preserve valuable elements of the landscape.