出版社：National Centre for Maps and Cartographic Heritage
摘要：Land cover change is the key issue of landscape history as it reflects the most relevant transformation of the use of natural resources, the land- and water management, the development of settlement structure and the changing environmental quality. Long term assessment of land cover change allows us to understand man-nature relationships and the positive and negative con-sequences of the changes both in environmental and in the socio-economic sense. Historical to-pographic maps of medium scale (1:50000-1:20000) from the late 18th century, made primarily for military purposes, covering large geographic areas in several time layers in Europe, represent extremely rich sources for the landscape historical research. Amongst the several regular Euro-pean map series we can find the Habsburg Military Surveys (HMSs), prepared from the mid 18th till the beginning of 20th century in three time layers, at a scale of 1:28800 and 1:25000, for a par-ticularly large area of Europe. Although the map sheets of the 18th century have several geomet-rical and content related drawbacks, they provide invaluable information about the landscapes be-fore the huge water reclamation and the regular statistical data collection. After the First World War, the countries becoming independent following the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy started to create their own mapping systems; however the methodology, the content, the scale and accuracy have been highly similar, especially after the Second World War during the communist period. The growing accuracy of the military surveys provide ever more valid in-formation about land cover changes of the last two centuries.This paper describes, compares and evaluates the geometric and thematic content and accuracy of the 18th-20th century military surveys from the point of view of the land cover and land use change. By highlighting the opportunities and the constraints of their use, it is intended to guide researchers in using these old maps.
关键词：historic maps; military surveys; land use; land cover change
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