Cultural-landscape layers as a tool for modeling forest development

Abstract

The paper is focused on the new method which could be used for the reconstruction of forest development. We used the model town Novaky with its surroundings (southern part of the Prievidzska Basin in Slovakia). This method is called cultural-landscape layers (CLL) and it is an alternative way of evaluating the forest transformations in the landscape. Historical development of the forest on the CLL profiles of our case study in Slovakia was elaborated according to the large-scale maps from years 1782/84, 1845, 1882, 1900, 1938, 1956 and 1994 transformed into a uniform scale (1: 25 000). Using cultural-landscape modelling, the development of forest on the choric model of local country within specific time horizons from the Young and Late Bronze Age (ca 1,200 800 BC) until 2025/30 were conducted. Method of cultural-landscape profiles has the potential to become one of the alternative ways for studying the development of forest and its anthropogenic exploitation with emphasis representation of horizontal and vertical dependencies and relationships between natural components of the landscape.