The Analysis of land-use changes in Šumava foothills

The Svatý Tomáš Highlands and the Trojmezí Highlands in the Šumava foothills were constantly settled during 13th century. Although this area is a borderland with a less favourable climate, agriculture had a significant influence on the landscape changes. However political and economic changes during the 1950´s, especially the establishment of the Iron Curtain, had impacted previous trends. Displacement of inhabitans, destruction of villages and inaccessibility of the area have restored the natural processes. The aim of this work is to describe changes of land use in The Šumava foothills with regard to nature protection and results evaluated by geographic information system technologies. From stable cadastre maps it was detected, that land use in 1st half of 19th century in the Šumava foothills was very varied, it was there existed a lot of small fields of arable soil. However the surface of arable soil diminished gradually during the time and at the present time don´t exist any more in the study area. In monitored areas in the first place grew the share of forests. The changes of management also had an impact on the size of succession areas. It was found, that changes in land use are very similar in the all monitored regions