International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXII Part 7C2, UNISPACE III, Vienna. 1999 
64 
I5PR5 
v^y 
UNISPACE III - ISPRS WORKSHOP ON 
“Resource Mapping from Space” 
9:00 am -12:00 pm, 22 July 1999, VIC Room B 
Vienna, Austria 
ISPRS 
LANDSCAPE CHANGES IN SLOVAK REPUBLIC 1970’s - 1990’s 
Jan Feranec, Jan Otahel. Marcel Sun. Tomas Cebecauer 
Institute of Geography, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Stefanikova 49, 814 73 Bratislava, Slovak Republic 
1 Introduction 
The contemporary progress in the field of mapping, part of 
which are remote sensing and geographical information systems 
(G1S), offers new possibilities of observation the landscape 
changes in various scales - from local to global ones. This trend 
is characterised by the possibility rendered by remote sensing 
data to create compatible and comparable databases of extensive 
territories and in different time horizons that can be analysed 
using the GIS and presented as thematic maps. 
Maps of landscape changes presented tlirough the land cover 
changes are a suitable tool of the knowledge-gathering, 
analysis, planning intentions and decision-making processes. 
Map expression of the land cover changes represents an 
efficient document on the landscape development comprising 
the semi-natural and natural parts of landscape and 
simultaneously of the dynamics of the development of 
urbanised and agricultural landscapes. 
One of the tasks of the EEA Phare Topic Link on Land Cover 
Consortium, co-ordinated by the GISAT company from Prague 
(including other members: HNIT Baltic from Vilnius, 
Romanian Geological Institute from Bucharest, and the Institute 
of Geography, Slovak Academy of Sciences from Bratislava) 
was to create land cover changes database in four Phare 
countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovak 
Republic) representing the period of the IQ's and 90’s. 
The inputs into the above mentioned database were the satellite 
images Landsat MSS from the second half of the 70's and the 
land cover data in scale 1:100 000 from the first half of the 90’s 
achieved under the CORINE Land Cover Project (CLC). Using 
the methodology of computer assisted visual interpretation a 
new database at the second hierarchic level (Feranec and 
Otahel, 1995) was created, which represents the state of land 
cover in the 70’s. Its comparison with the CLC data from the 
90’s led to creation of database of the land cover changes which 
took place in the territory of Slovakia over the period of 
approximately fifteen years. 
The aim of this contribution is to provide basic characteristics of 
the newly created database and identified landscape changes in 
Slovakia in period 70’s - 90’s. 
2. Characteristics of the methodology 
2.1 Methodology of the land cover changes database 
CREATION 
The input data for identification of land cover changes were 
Landsat TM images and the subsequently created vector 
database of land cover 1:100 000 under the CLC Project 
(Feranec and Otahel 1995, Feranec et al. 1996) in 1994-1996. 
From the temporal point of view this database represents the 
beginning of the 90’s (1989-1992, hereafter CLC90). Land 
cover database for the period of the second half of the 70’s 
(1976-1979, hereafter CLC70) was created by application of the 
Landsat MSS images. Land cover changes database for the 
70’s-90’s period (hereafter CLC70-90) is the result of 
overlaying of the CLC70 and CLC90 data. 
The applied methodological procedure can be summarised into 
the following steps: 
preparation of the Landsat TM and Landsat MSS satellite 
data for identification of land cover from the 70’s 
(CLC70), 
aggregation of the 3 rd level classes to the 2 nd liierarcliic 
level of the CLC nomenclature (Hevmann et al. 1994) and 
segmentation of the vector data CLC90, 
CLC70 classes identification by modification of the 
aggregated CLC90 database, part of this step was also 
revision of the original CLC90 data. 
mosaicking of the single CLC70 database segments, 
checking of the physical and logical integrity, 
creation and adjustment of the changes of the CLC70-90 
data by overlaying CLC70 and CLC90, generation of the 
final CLC70 database. 
The individual methodological steps were realised by using the 
software Easi/Pace (preparation of the satellite data for 
interpretation), ArcView GIS (visual interpretation and 
databases processing), and Data Automation Kit (final checking 
and processing). 
In the preparatory stage the source data were segmented by the 
sequence of the sheets of 1:100 000 topographic maps (system 
S-42, Gauss-Kruger map projection). Coloured, contrasted 
compositions (spectral bands TM 542 and MSS 421) were 
created from the satellite data and imported in the GeoTIFF 
format into the ArcView GIS software. Because of poorer 
resolution of the MSS data (spatial resolution 80 metres, 
radiometric resolution 6 bits, 4 spectral bands (Feranec et al. 
1997)), it was possible to work only with the second liierarcliic 
level of the CLC nomenclature. Hence the primary data set 
CLC70 as the source material for identification of the land 
cover from the IQ's, was created from the CLC90 segments 
aggregated at the 2 nd level (which reduced the number of land 
cover classes from 31 at the third level to 13 at the second 
level). 
Creation of the CLC70 database was based on the retrospective 
analysis (donwdating) and confrontation of original CLC90 
polygons with the Landsat MSS data from the 70’s and their 
modification. The computer assisted visual interpretation was 
carried out using two windows in ArcView GIS. The CLC90 
data with the Landsat TM image visualised in the left window 7