PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 42: Applying ecological theories to multiple spatio-temporal scales and to different landscapes in Europe
Organizer(s): J Loeffler and U Steinhardt
Thursday, August 11, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 511a, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Monitoring of landscape change and functions in Saxony (Eastern Germany): Methods and indicators.

Walz, Ulrich ^*,1, ¹ Institute of Ecological and Regional Development, Dresden, Germany

ABSTRACT- The demand on land for settlements and traffic in Germany still is on a very high level and partly even still rises. Changes of land use often take place as small-scale individual measures insignificant for itself seen. These however can lead by spatial and temporal cumulation to significant changes of the regional structures and of the environmental conditions. Therefore important tasks of landscape ecology at present are to monitor and assess natural resources, to examine impacts and effects of human intervention and – last but not least – to observe the state of the environment over long time periods. Substantial goals of the research of the Leibniz Institute of Ecological and Regional Development (IOER) are the development of methods for the detection of land use changes and for the description of this development by indicators as well as the analysis and evaluation of the effects of such processes on selected environmental protection goods. Environmental information systems and remote sensing technologies provide tools and methods which help to assess the consequences resulting from certain actions and decisions quickly. GIS technologies were developed for the digital preparation and analysis of historical maps and the following digital land use mapping. This enables the spatial and statistical appraisal of time series and to connect it with natural-spatial data. In this contribution the focus is laid on spatial indicators for the description of the environmental effects of land use changes. As an important aspect the analysis of the structural landscape changes is paid special attention. One main process is the urbanisation in town regions, while as a second process the rural areas are affected by the increasing fragmentation with infrastructure. Results from a long-time monitoring project on three spatial levels will be presented: the town-region of Dresden, the close-to-the-city rural region and the development of traffic infrastructures and their impact on the environment on regional level.

Key words: Land use change, Landscape structure, Landscape fragmentation, Environmentail information system