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Towards resolving conservation issues through historical aerial imagery: vegetation cover changes in the Central European tundra

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Abstract

Mountain ecosystems are considered to be sensitive to global change and human disturbance. Our retrospective analysis of archival aerial imagery showed dynamics of arctic-alpine tundra vegetation in the Krkonoše Mountains, Czech Republic; image classification revealed a change in land cover classes in 44% of the study area over the past eighty years. This particular ecosystem holds many rare features, such as high numbers of endemic, glacial relict and rare species as well as relict geomorphological components such as sorted patterned ground. Our study revealed an accelerating expansion of the native and planted shrub, Pinus mugo, from 30.6% of the study area in 1936 to 48.6% in 2018, mostly at the expense of grasslands that decreased from 59.3% in 1936 to 44.2% in 2018. Shrub expansion represents a threat to relict periglacial landforms, covering 8% of the sorted patterned ground in 1936 and 26.5% in 2018. Shrub encroachment was shown to be due to artificial planting of the pine in the past as well as the cessation of former farming (mowing and cattle grazing) and, most probably, also by global change. Both dwarf pine stands and tundra grasslands hold high conservation value (Natura 2000 habitats); a balance between different nature protection interests must, therefore, be ensured. Detailed spatio-temporally, explicit outputs of the remote sensing analysis can serve as a baseline for nature conservation in order to prepare corresponding management plans.

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Fig. 1

adopted from Kociánová et al. 2015) (a). A view of tundra grasslands (b), areas of planted dwarf pine (c) and pattened ground (d)

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Data Availability

The imagery used was provided by (i) the Czech Office of Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre, (ii) the Military Geographical and Hydrometeorological Office, (iii) the Czech Environmental Information Agency, and (iv) the Krkonoše Mountains National Park Administration under licence agreements that do not allow for its further distribution. The classification outputs are a part of the project CZ.05.4.27/0.0/0.0/17_078/0009044 and can be provided on request.

Code availability

Not applicable.

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Acknowledgements

The research was part of a project CZ.05.4.27/0.0/0.0/17_078/0009044 funded by the Ministry of Environment of the Czech Republic. JM was supported by the long-term research development project RVO 67985939 of the Czech Academy of Sciences and LČ by the project UNCE/HUM 018 of Charles University. Our work would not be possible without help from students at Charles University, namely Jakub Růžička and Mojmír Polák, and technicians in our teams, namely Zdeňka Konopová and Jan Pačák.

Funding

The research was part of a project CZ.05.4.27/0.0/0.0/17_078/0009044 funded by the Ministry of Environment of the Czech Republic, a project UNCE/HUM 018 of Charles University, and a long-term research development project RVO 67985939 of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Science, Charles University, Albertov 6, Prague, Czech Republic

    Markéta Potůčková, Lucie Kupková, Lucie Červená, Jakub Lysák & David Krause

  2. The Krkonoše Mountains National Park Administration, Dobrovského 3, Vrchlabí, Czech Republic

    David Krause, Záboj Hrázský & Stanislav Březina

  3. Institute of Botany, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Zámek 1, Průhonice, Czech Republic

    Jana Müllerová

Authors
  1. Markéta Potůčková
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  2. Lucie Kupková
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  3. Lucie Červená
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  4. Jakub Lysák
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  5. David Krause
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  6. Záboj Hrázský
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  7. Stanislav Březina
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  8. Jana Müllerová
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Contributions

MP, LK, and JM carried out the image classification, its validation, the processing of ancillary data; they also prepared statistical and graphical outputs of the spatial–temporal image analysis. JL and LČ developed scripts in ArcGIS for spatial–temporal data analysis and validation. DK contributed with analyses relating vegetation cover and patterned ground. ZH and SB supervised linking the results with the conservation aspects. The manuscript was drafted by JM (Introduction, Discussion and Conclusion), MP and DK (Results). All authors contributed to designing the manuscript’s concept and to editing the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Markéta Potůčková.

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Communicated by Antony Brown.

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

See Tables

Table 9 Transformation table between the Natura 2000 habitats and classes of grasslands and dwarf pine stands
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9,

Table 10 Area of the land cover classes in the five evaluated years resulting from classification of aerial images
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10,

Table 11 Change detection matrices
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11.

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Potůčková, M., Kupková, L., Červená, L. et al. Towards resolving conservation issues through historical aerial imagery: vegetation cover changes in the Central European tundra. Biodivers Conserv 30, 3433–3455 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02255-y

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