Do historical maps show the maximal anthropopressure in the Carpathians?

Many landscapes bear the marks of historical land use.These marks can be the basis for a reconstruction of a historical land use structure as some of them are typical of different types of human activity.The aim of this paper is to determine whether Austrian cadastral maps from the 19th century present the image of the most transformed environment in the Western Carpathians as a result of agricultural activity.Land use structure and terrain forms were detected based on Austrian cadastral maps from 1848,airborne laser scanning and field studies.In two of the test areas,the percentage of arable fields was higher among the plots with stone mounds than the percentage among the plots without them.In the third test area,the relationship was reversed.Also,lynchets,terraces and stone walls sometimes occur in plots that were not arable fields in 1848.Thus,the Austrian cadastral maps from 1848 could not reflect the maximal range of arable fields in the Carpathians in the 19th century.However,it is impossible to determine the historical structure of land use precisely.Nevertheless,an inventory of terrain forms can be used to assess land use when historical maps have not preserved or when available maps do not present land use in detail.

Three distinct global estimates of historical land-cover change and land-use conversions for over 200 years

Earth＇s land cover has been extensively transformed over time due to both human activities and natural causes. Previous global studies have focused on developing spatial and temporal patterns of dominant human land-use activities （e.g., cropland, pastureland, urban land, wood harvest）. Process-based modeling studies adopt different strategies to estimate the changes in land cover by using these land-use data sets in combination with a potential vegetation map, and subsequently use this information for impact assessments. However, due to unaccounted changes in land cover （resulting from both indirect anthropogenic and natural causes）, heterogeneity in land-use/cover （LUC） conversions among grid cells, even for the same land use activity, and uncertainty associated with potential vegetation mapping and historical estimates of human land use result in land cover estimates that are substantially different compared to results acquired from remote sensing observations. Here, we present a method to implicitly account for the differences arising from these uncertainties in order to provide historical estimates of land cover that are consistent with satellite estimates for recent years. Due to uncertainty in historical agricultural land use, we use three widely accepted global estimates of cropland and pastureland in combination with common wood harvest and urban land data sets to generate three distinct estimates of historical land-cover change and underlying LUC conversions. Hence, these distinct historical reconstructions offer a wide range of plausible regional estimates of uncertainty and the extent to which different ecosystems have undergone changes. The annual land cover maps and LUC conversion maps are reported at 0.5°×0.5° resolution and describe the area of 28 land- cover types and respective underlying land-use transitions. The reconstructed data sets are relevant for studies addressing the impact of land-cover change on biogeo- physics, biogeochemistry, water cycle, and global climate.

WATER USE IN HUMAN CIVILIZATIONS: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ANALYSIS OF A PERPETUAL SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL CHALLENGE

Since the onset of human societies, settlement patterns and social structures have been shaped by access to water. This review covers historical and recent examples from Cambodia, Central Asia, India, Latin America and the Arabian Peninsula to analyze the role of water resources in determining the rise and collapse of civilizations. Over recent decades increasing globalization and concomitant possibilities to externalize water needs as virtual water have obscured global dependence on water resources via telecoupling, but rapid urbanization brings it now back to the political agenda. It is foremost in the urban arena of poorer countries where competing claims for water increasingly lead to scale-transcendent conflicts about ecosystem services. Solutions to the dilemma will require broad stakeholder-based agreements on water use taking into account the available data on water resources, their current and potential use efficiency, recycling of water after effective treatment, and social-ecological approaches of improved governance and conflict resolution.