IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i22p12664-d680361.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Long-Term Land Use and Landscape Pattern Changes in a Marshland of Hungary

Author

Listed:
  • Gergő Németh

    (Doctoral School of Earth Sciences, University of Pécs, H-7624 Pécs, Hungary)

  • Dénes Lóczy

    (Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, University of Pécs, H-7624 Pécs, Hungary)

  • Péter Gyenizse

    (Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, University of Pécs, H-7624 Pécs, Hungary)

Abstract

This paper presents the trends of landscape change in the marshes on the southern shore of Lake Balaton, a wetland profoundly transformed by human activities. The study does not only deal with alterations in the areal proportions of land use classes but also quantitatively analyses landscape pattern, comparing landscape metrics on different dates. Based on the findings, proposals for rehabilitation are made. Through the restoration of wetland habitats, the provision level of ecosystem services can be raised. Landscape change was investigated from 1783 to 2020. For this purpose, archive maps were digitized, CORINE land cover datasets corrected by Sentinel-2 imagery were employed and from the vector data, the proportions of land use classes were calculated. For landscape pattern perimeter, area, neighbourhood and diversity metrics were used, calculated by ArcGIS vLATE plugin. It was pointed out that in land cover, the share of wetlands considerably declined over the centuries but in recent decades somewhat expanded. In the 20th century, grasslands were the predominant land use class, but with the spread of other categories, land use has become more complex. Landscape metrics show an increased fragmentation of natural habitats, a higher number of patches and edge density, leading to higher landscape diversity. Rehabilitation proposals include the establishment of rainwater retention reservoirs, the conversion of arable land which cannot be cultivated profitably to close-to-natural classes (first of all, grasslands) and the plantation of gallery forests of native tree species along canals. In comparison with other regions, similar temporal trends and spatial distributions are observed. For instance, the internationally well-known transformation of the Doñana wetland started later but was more intensive than in Hungary.

Suggested Citation

  • Gergő Németh & Dénes Lóczy & Péter Gyenizse, 2021. "Long-Term Land Use and Landscape Pattern Changes in a Marshland of Hungary," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-22, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:22:p:12664-:d:680361
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12664/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12664/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vassilis Detsis & Eleni Gkadolou & Katerina Koutsovoulou & Georgios Tolias, 2022. "Long-Term Landscape Dynamics to Assess Land Degradation Hypotheses—An Exploratory Study of Evidence from Travelers’ Narrations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-14, July.
    2. Péter Csorba & Krisztina Bánóczki & Zoltán Túri, 2022. "Land Use Changes in Peri-Urban Open Spaces of Small Towns in Eastern Hungary," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-18, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:22:p:12664-:d:680361. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.