Methodology of Evaluation of Changes in Land Use in Slovenia between 1896 and 1999

Abstract

The article presents the elaboration of two work methods for land use changes assessment and their comparison. Land use changes between 1896 and 1999 were researched on the level of the entire state. The basic source in undertaking the study is the data from the land cadastre and the cadastral municipality was selected as the smallest research unit. An ever-decreasing proportion of agricultural land and an increasing proportion of forest and built-up area is the key issue emerging from this study. Both methods are supported by the same input data, but their results differ in essence. The first one demonstrates the decreasing of agricultural land due to afforestation. The processes where most of the various land categories are being prevailingly overgrown with forest, is very significant in the western part of Slovenia. The second method shows so called extensification among the agricultural land use categories, which means that more intensive categories (cultivated fields, vineyards, orchards) are changing into less intensive categories, prevailingly into meadows.