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Land Use and Cover Change in the Industrial Era: A Spatial Analysis of Alpine River Catchments and Fluvial Corridors
- Source :
- Frontiers in Environmental Science, Vol 9 (2021)
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Frontiers Media SA, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Land uses affect flood risks in various ways. The comparative analysis of the historical and current land cover/uses helps to better understand changing flood regimes. Based on historical cadastre maps from 1826 to 1859, the land cover/uses in the Austrian catchments of the rivers Rhine, Salzach and Drava were reconstructed to almost the level of exact plots of land. Catchment-wide analysis reveals a six-fold expansion of settlement areas, a decline of arable land by 69% and a shrinking of the formerly glaciated areas by 73% until 2016. In the Alpine fluvial corridors, i.e. flood-prone areas at the valley floors and valley sides at ca. 300-year floods, settlements even expanded 7.5-fold, severely increasing the potential for flood damages. At the same time, the overall channel area of running waters has been reduced by 40% and 95% the formerly large wetlands have been lost. Overall, the fluvial corridors were truncated by 203 km2 or 14%, thereby reducing flood retention capacity. The concentration of intensive forms of human land uses at lower altitudes, coupled with an upward shift of less intensively used, near-natural forms of land cover, has led to a both spatial and vertical separation of Alpine landscape features over the long term. Warmer temperatures due to climate change are expected to promote the demonstrated upward shifts of Alpine vegetation.
- Subjects :
- 010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
0208 environmental biotechnology
Fluvial
Wetland
flood risk
02 engineering and technology
Land cover
01 natural sciences
altitudinal land use shift
GE1-350
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
General Environmental Science
land cover change
geography
geography.geographical_feature_category
Flood myth
Land use
land use
Vegetation
Alpine rivers
020801 environmental engineering
Environmental sciences
historical GIS
Environmental science
Physical geography
Arable land
Channel (geography)
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 2296665X
- Volume :
- 9
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Frontiers in Environmental Science
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....47f0b5f72a1f014943acd9085613c3c1