Anna M. Hersperger, Matthias Bürgi, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, Birmensdorf, Switzerland
Driving forces of landscape change 1930 – 2000 in the urbanizing Limmat Valley, Zurich, Switzerland (assigned to theme
This research aims to identify the driving forces that changed the Limmat Valley west of Zurich from a traditional agricultural valley in 1930 to a suburban region of the city of Zurich in 2000. The main objectives of the paper are to identify 1) the most significant jurisdictional level for the observed landscape changes and 2) the relative impact of socioeconomic versus political and cultural driving forces. We work with a framework in which we distinguish among five major types of driving forces namely socioeconomic, political, technological, natural, and cultural driving forces. The framework further differentiates driving forces on four jurisdictional levels, specifically local, cantonal, national, and international levels. The landscape changes are quantified based on the comparison of historical maps from 1930, 1956, 1976, and 2000 in 32 plots of 0.25-km2. We found 2746 individual changes (new or vanished landscape elements) and 112 persistencies. For each of the 2746 changes, a set of one to 14 driving forces from a list of 72 was determined to be critical. The changes were then assigned to one of three major trends of landscape change in the study area, i.e., urbanization, agricultural intensification, and greening (increasing ecological values). In order to address the research questions, an aggregation of landscape changes and related driving forces into major trends of landscape changes, jurisdictional levels and type of driving forces was performed. Such an analytical and systematic study of driving forces, and specifically the clear link of changes and persistencies of landscape elements to specific sets of driving forces, is essential for the development of innovative land use change models.
 | Conference organized through conf-vienna
(copyright Gunther Maier) |