Abstract
Loss of agricultural - especially arable - land represent the main trend of land use changes in Czechia after 1989. Arable (and agricultural) land has been declining here since the end of the 19th century.
The paper deals with the extensification processes (grassing over, afforestation and land abandonment) in the Czech rural landscape, as the attention of the researchers has so far been devoted to the decline of agricultural land around large cities due to urbanization and suburbanization. The influence of socio-geographic factors (quantifiable and spatially explicit) on long-term land use changes is assessed.
In the present quantitative assessment of the influence of these factors, the researchers have taken advantage of the data on the spatial exposedness of Czechia relating to the 1980s (Hampl, Gardavský, Kühnl 1987), while the dramatic change of this indicator in the monitored period from 1845 to the present was neglected (Bičík et al. 2010). To obtain more tangible results, it is necessary to create adequate models for other time horizons.
Furthermore, due to the lack of sufficiently accurate and up-to-date data on these processes (after 1990 and above all in 2000s), it is necessary to combine different data sources (cadastre, LPIS and others). The result is an evaluation of the relation between changes of the chosen socio-geographic indicator of the area's exposedness and changes of the extensification processes in the landscape (and their regional patterns).
Land use changes in Czechia are also compared with other Central European countries.