Marco NEUBERT, Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development , Germany
The inner-German border area is characterized by an eventful history, which resulted in extensive land use changes. After the Second World War, the division of Germany and the development of massive, almost impassable border fortifications with additional, frontier zones with restrictions took place from 1945 onwards. The main driver of changes in land use during the socialist GDR period was agriculture (collectivization, intensification, mechanization, chemization, melioration, etc.) (URANIA 2003), e.g. leading to an almost complete loss of wetland areas.
With the opening of the inner-German border on November 9, 1989, and reunification on October 3, 1990, new processes became spatially effective. The previously peripheral region was suddenly of central importance and many developments were caught up. This concerned in particular the restoration of the previously interrupted, connecting technical infrastructure (especially road and highway connections). The border fortifications were almost completely dismantled and these areas now form the "Green Belt" nature conservation project in the area formerly known as the "Death Strip" (BUND 2021). The agricultural structures, on the other hand, remained almost unchanged.
The research is exemplified by the rural Eichsfeld region in the heart of Germany, the tri-border area of Thuringia, Hesse and Lower Saxony. To picture the development of division and reunification including the resulting and accompanying land-use changes historical maps and digital data in scale of 1:25,000 in five stages from 1939 till 2014 have been analyzed using Geographic Information technologies (Kim & Neubert 2018, 2019). The backward editing method (Kienast et al. 1991) was used to digitalize land use features (polygons and lines) by respective overlaying and editing. Thus, the changes can easily being located and quantified.
Mots clés : Landscape Change|Land Use Change|Historical Maps|Geographic Information System|Green Belt
A103090MN