MORAVIAN GEOGRAPHICAL REPORTS - Institute of Geonics ...

MoraVian geographical reports 4/2010, Vol. 18
abandonment. Most of new grassland areas have been
created from the former arable land and are located
in remote areas near forests.
Built-up areas were slightly decreasing until 1900 since
when they started to increase. Fig. 6 shows the land
use forms in year 1900. The temporal decrease was
likely due to the lower accuracy of historical maps. The
urbanised landscape reached its maximum in 2003 as
a result of population growth associated with the
Fig. 3: Land use in year 1782
Fig. 4: Population growth trend in the study area
Source: (Kolektív, 1977, 1978), Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic
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residential and industrial construction in the second
half of the 20 th century. A similar trend was observed
in the Popradská kotlina Basin (NW part of the Spiš
region) with the exception of mountain tourism centres
development in the High Tatras.
4.2 Stable land use areas
As shown in Fig. 9 the areas with no change in land
use are located more or less equally within the study
area. Larger continual unchanged areas lay in SE and