Land use changes and environmental stress accounting (case study from northwestern part of the Czech-German borderland)

Abstract

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.