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Lecturer(s)
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Netopil Patrik, Mgr. Ph.D.
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Course content
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Lectures: 1. Concepts of landscape in ecology, geography, history, landscape architecture and aesthetics; natural, cultural and technogenic landscapes. The European Landscape Convention. Landscape as a system and as a palimpsest; primary, secondary and tertiary landscape structure. Assignment of the semester project. 2. Quaternary landscape development, with emphasis on the Holocene: postglacial development of vegetation, soils and the river network, natural disturbance, the debate over the prehistoric forest. Limits of reconstructing an original landscape and why it is not a reference state for restoration. 3. Earliest land use in Europe and Central Europe: the Neolithic transition and the spread of farming, first deforestation, secondary open land, onset of soil erosion. The old settlement region and the dependence of settlement on soil and climate; settlement continuity and expansion into higher elevations. 4. Early and high Middle Ages: stabilisation of the settlement network, hillforts and early towns, property relations and their spatial expression, forest exploitation. 5. The great medieval colonisation: emphyteutic tenure, field-system and settlement types, the three-field system, the road network, clearance of upland areas. Formation of the skeleton of today's rural landscape and its imprint in parcellation. 6. Late Middle Ages and Renaissance: deserted villages, fishpond construction and its hydrological logic, ore mining, glassmaking, timber consumption and the first forest ordinances. 7. Baroque and Enlightenment: the landscape after the Thirty Years' War, the Baroque designed landscape (landmarks, avenues, game preserves, vistas) as a representation of power, Theresian and Josephine reforms, the first systematic surveys. 8. Industrial Revolution and the nineteenth century: land consolidation, drainage and river regulation, railways, coal mining, coniferous monocultures, urbanisation and recreational landscapes, beginnings of nature conservation. 9. Interwar and early postwar periods: land reforms, expulsion of the border population, abandoned villages and the onset of succession, military training areas. 10. Socialist transformation of the landscape: collectivisation, technical land reorganisation, amalgamation into large blocks, removal of baulks and field paths, large-scale drainage, opencast mining and reclamation. Consequences for erosion, water regime, soil and biodiversity. 11. The landscape after 1989: restitution and privatisation, the persistence of large field blocks (ownership is not the same as use), suburbanisation, fragmentation by transport, land abandonment, restoration schemes. Drivers of change and the role of the Common Agricultural Policy. 12. A typology of European landscapes and their developmental trajectories; the Czech trajectory set against enclosures, bocage, Alpine and Scandinavian landscapes. Landscape protection and design instruments (landscape character, territorial system of ecological stability, land consolidation, EIA) as responses to this development. Seminars: critical assessment of historical map sources; connection of map services, digitisation of areal and linear features, attribute table following a common legend. Comparison of land use in a selected area across two time horizons - map output, table of gains and losses, and a commentary on the most significant change, its cause and its consequences for soil, water regime and landscape permeability.
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Learning activities and teaching methods
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Lecture, Monologic Lecture(Interpretation, Training), Dialogic Lecture (Discussion, Dialog, Brainstorming), Work with Text (with Book, Textbook), Projection (static, dynamic)
- Attendace
- 36 hours per semester
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Learning outcomes
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The course teaches students to read the contemporary landscape as a palimpsest a layered record of natural conditions and human decision-making and to explain its present form through identifiable driving forces: farming practice, property relations, available technology and public policy. The narrative follows a chronological axis from Quaternary landscape change through the Neolithic transition and the old settlement region to a detailed account of landscape development in the Czech lands from the early Middle Ages to the present, closing with a comparison against the developmental trajectories of other European cultural landscapes. In doing so, the course adds the dimensions of time and decision-making to the spatial and process-based account of landscape: students explain not merely what a landscape is, but when, by what means and why its present condition came about. The practical axis of the course is an individual comparison of land use in a selected area across two time horizons several decades apart. Students work with historical sources: Stable Cadastre mapping and the imperial imprints, the Habsburg military surveys, historical aerial orthophotography from the 1950s and current orthophotography - assess their evidential value critically, digitise both areal and linear landscape features in a GIS environment, and produce a map output together with a tabular assessment of gains and losses across land-use categories. The inclusion of the road network and watercourses allows change to be traced not only in areal structure but also in landscape permeability and water regime. Students apply this understanding of landscape history to the interpretation of current problems of soil, water, biodiversity and landscape permeability, and to explaining what present-day landscape protection and design instruments are actually responding to.
On completion of the course, the student will be able to: account for the principal stages of landscape development in the present-day Czech Republic from the Holocene to the present, identifying for each the driving forces behind the transformation - physical conditions, farming practice, property relations, technology and public policy; explain why a reconstructed landscape predating substantial human influence does not constitute a reference state for present-day restoration, and delimit the boundaries of such reconstruction; date a specific landscape feature - field parcellation, field systems, baulks, the road network, fishpond systems, forest species composition - explain the cause that produced it, and distinguish layers of differing age within the same landscape; evaluate the evidential value of a historical map source with regard to its scale, positional accuracy and original purpose, and determine which claims it can and cannot legitimately support; produce, in a GIS environment, a comparison of land use across two time horizons: connect background map services, digitise areal and linear landscape features, assign attributes according to a common legend, and compile a map output and a table of gains and losses by category; interpret the changes identified - single out the most significant, attribute it to a specific driving force, and derive its consequences for soil, water regime and landscape permeability; situate the development of the Czech landscape within a comparative European framework and explain how it differs from the contrasting trajectories of other European cultural landscapes; explain what historically produced landscape conditions present-day protection and design instruments are responding to.
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Prerequisites
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The course carries no formal prerequisites and is designed to be accessible to students of both master's programmes. Students are expected to have a working grounding in physical geography and geomorphology, soil science, hydrology and general ecology at bachelor's level in the natural sciences - that is, the ability to recognise how the physical conditions of a territory constrain the ways in which it is used. The semester project assumes practical GIS competence at introductory-course level: familiarity with QGIS or ArcGIS, work with vector layers and attribute tables, connection of WMS and WMTS background services, georeferencing of raster sources, and digitisation of areal and linear features. Routine spreadsheet skills are likewise assumed. No prior knowledge of Czech history or historical geography is required. The chronological and periodisation framework is supplied to students as preparatory reading, allowing lectures to concentrate on mechanisms and causal relationships rather than on dating.
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Assessment methods and criteria
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Mark, Written exam, Seminar Work
The course is completed by a credit (zápočet) and a written examination. The credit requires submission and acceptance of the semester project - a comparison of land use in a selected area across two time horizons, comprising a map output, a table of gains and losses by land-use category, and a short commentary on the most significant change observed, its cause and its consequences. The credit is a prerequisite for admission to the examination. The examination is written, with open-ended questions, assessing the ability to account for the stages of landscape development and their driving forces, to date landscape features, to assess a historical map source critically, and to explain the rationale of present-day landscape protection and design instruments.
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Recommended literature
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ANDERSON, David, Andrew GOUDIE a Adrian PARKER. (2007). Global environments through the quaternary: exploring environmental change. New York, N.Y.
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ANTROP, Marc. Why landscapes of the past are important for the future. 2005.
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BERANOVÁ, Magdalena a Antonín KUBAČÁK. (2010). Dějiny zemědělství v Čechách a na Moravě. Praha.
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BIČÍK, Ivan; KUPKOVÁ, Lucie; JELEČEK, Leoš; KABRDA, Jan; ŠTYCH, Přemysl et al. (2015). Land use changes in the Czech Republic 1845-2010: socio-economic driving forces..
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BIČÍK, Ivan. (2010). Vývoj využití ploch v Česku. Praha.
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BÜRGI, Matthias; HERSPERGER, Anna M. a SCHNEEBERGER, Nina. Driving forces of landscape change: current and new directions. 2004.
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GOJDA, Martin. (2000). Archeologie krajiny: vývoj archetypů kulturní krajiny. Praha.
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HÁJEK, Pavel. (2008). Jde pevně kupředu naše zem: krajina českých zemí v období socialismu 1948-1989. Praha.
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KOLEJKA, Jaromír. (2013). Nauka o krajině: geografický pohled a východiska. Živá příroda. Praha.
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KOLEJKA, Jaromír. (2014). Přírodní krajiny České republiky: katalog typů přírodních krajin. Brno.
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Kolektiv autorů. (2009). Atlas krajiny České republiky: Landscape atlas of the Czech Republic. Praha.
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KUČA, Karel; MALINA, Ondřej; SALAŠOVÁ, Alena a WEBER, Martin. (2020). Historické kulturní krajiny České republiky. Průhonice.
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LIPSKÝ, Zdeněk. (2000). Sledování změn v kulturní krajině: učební text pro cvičení z předmětu Krajinná ekologie. Kostelec nad Černými Lesy.
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LÖW, Jiří a MÍCHAL, Igor. (2003). Krajinný ráz. Kostelec nad Černými lesy.
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LOŽEK, Vojen. Po stopách pravěkých dějů: o silách, které vytvářely naši krajinu. Praha. 2011.
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LOŽEK, Vojen. (2011). Zrcadlo minulosti: česká a slovenská krajina v kvartéru. Praha.
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Pokorný, P. (2011). Neklidné časy: kapitoly ze společných dějin přírody a lidí. Praha.
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Sádlo, J., Pokorný, P., Hájek, P., Dreslerová, D., & Cílek, V. (2005). Krajina a revoluce: významné přelomy ve vývoji kulturní krajiny českých zemí. Praha.
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