Monitoring changes in landscape development with focus on wetlands

Nshimirimana Delphine Huriro

Master's thesis

Abstract:

The importance of wetlands in landscape is irrefutable. They are among the most productive ecosystems upon which human and other countless species depend on for survival. Despite their significance, they are declining at alarming rate, agriculture and urbanization are the leading drivers of wetland loss. This research aimed to assess the impact of landscape development on wetlands biotopes in four cadastral districts of the city of Prague by assessing spatial-temporal change expressed as the size of extinct, continuous, and recent wetlands and by identifying and quantifying LULC categories that replaced extinct wetlands and those at the expense of which recent wetlands occur. Imperials mandatory imprints of the stable cadastre were used to reconstruct historical LULC. Contemporary orthophoto of the Czech Republic supplemented by arable land, forests and wetlands databases were used to construct current LULC using GIS tools. The results showed that wetlands decreased from 305.32ha (9.34% of the total studied area i.e. 3268 ha) in 1841 to 146.90(4.50%) in 2020.In total, 227.80 ha of wetlands are extinct, agriculture, non-forest woody vegetation and built-up areas are the leading factors behind wetland loss. On other hand, 69.36ha are covered by recent wetlands which replaced mainly agriculture, forests, and permanent grassland. Continuous wetlands cover a total area of 77.51 ha. This research is expected to contribute to existing studies on historical development of wetlands at landscape level in Czech Republic and its findings could be used as basis for wetlands restoration in the studied area and future research.

Keywords

LULC change, Wetlands, Spatial-temporal, trajectories, GIS

Jazyk práce: English

Datum vytvoření / odevzdání či podání práce: 28. 3. 2021

Obhajoba závěrečné práce

• Vedúci: doc. Ing. Jan Skaloš, Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Environmental Sciences

Master programme / odbor:
Landscape Engineering / Landscape Planning