The Endangered Ancient Cultural Landscape Heritage in Moravian Plains

Abstract

The inventory of remnants from the pre-industrial cultural landscape in Moravia was conducted between 2016 and 2020 across 3075 cadastral areas. This comprehensive project, supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, aimed to document the historical heritage systematically. By comparing the present land use structure through recent orthophotomaps with cadastral mapping from the 1820s-1830s, over 1100 areas re-sembling their appearance from almost two centuries ago were identified. The primary ob-jective of the current research was to discern connections between inventory results and regional as well as local terrain conditions. Historically, the prevalent land use featured narrow strips of fields, often supplemented by aristocratic estates. Unfortunately, only 96 segments of the ancient pre-industrial landscape have endured in the plains region. Among these, a mere 73 are situated on flat terrain (with slopes up to 3°), indicating the pronounced impact of homogenized land use, transforming the plains of Moravia into large, monotonous blocks of arable land. Assessing the preservation of the ancient land use structure, 16 remnants of the historical landscape with a dominance of large-scale use on former estates stand out as being in the best condition on the plains. Only 12 areas exhibit exceptional preservation of the land division into small plots, and of these, a mere seven are located on flat terrain. It is plausible that these areas, characterized by a detailed land tenure possibly dating back to the Middle Ages, represent a historical natural and cultural landscape heritage comparable in value to protected constructions and legally safeguarded natural areas. These specific regions should garner interest and prove suitable for voluntary forms of nature and landscape protection. URL: https://www.gcass.science.upjs.sk/