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

Gergő Németh, Dénes Lóczy and Péter Gyenizse
Additional contact information
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

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 22, 1-22

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.

Keywords: wetlands; land use classes; landscape indices; archive maps; Lake Balaton area (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12664/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12664/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:22:p:12664-:d:680361

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().