Trajectories, Causes and Consequences of
Land Cover and Land Use Changes in Central Europe

Background

Land system change in Central Europe

The TRACE project examined land cover and land use change trajectories across Central Europe (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) over the past fifty years. The region underwent profound political and economic transformations following the 1990 transition from centralised command economies to market-oriented systems, and again with EU accession in 2004 — shifts that substantially restructured land management, agricultural practices, and urban expansion patterns. By integrating dense optical and radar satellite time series with socio-economic datasets, TRACE aimed to disentangle the drivers of land change from its environmental consequences, with particular attention to biodiversity responses and carbon pool dynamics.

Objectives

Research objectives

• 01 Land cover change mapping — detection and spatial characterisation of agricultural abandonment, afforestation, and wildland–urban interface dynamics across a 50-year satellite archive
• 02 Driver analysis — ensemble modelling of socio-economic, political, and institutional drivers of land change using the telecoupling framework at regional scale
• 03 Biodiversity assessment — quantification of land change impacts on biodiversity using remote sensing-derived indicators, including roadless area mapping at continental scale
• 04 Carbon dynamics — assessment of carbon pool and flux responses to land cover change trajectories across Central Europe

Publications

Selected outputs