Changes of landscape structure and soil production function since the 18th century in northwest Saxony

The objectives of this paper are (1) to reconstruct time series of the historical and current landscape structures based on historical docu-ments and serial cadastral maps, (2) to analyse the changes of agricul-tural production function by the application of historical soil assess-ments and (3) to analyse the connections between landscape structure and production function in reference to the social and economic driving forces. The case study area is today an intensively-used agricultural landscape located nearby Taucha-Eilenburg (NW-Saxony), Germany. Arable landscapes in Germany are changing with increasing dynamics: valua-ble structures and landscape functions of the traditional and multifunc-tional landscape were lost. New landscape structures replaced the traditional ones slowly or sometimes also in short time steps. There-fore, this paper focuses on the changes of landscape structures and that of the soil production function induced by land use since the 18th century. The changes are analysed on the basis of historical and serial cadastral maps and documents by covering four time steps from 1750 to 2005. The historical maps were scanned, geo-referenced and digital-ised in GIS. Thus, quantitative analysis of landscape structure changes on parcel level is enabled. The production function is explicitly recon-structed on the basis of the Prussian Taxation of the real estate of 1864 (Preußische Grundsteuerbonitierung) and The German Soil Taxation (Reichsbodenschätzung) of 1937. Changes observed on the serial cadastral maps were linked with the social and economical driving forces and the soil production function. Moreover, there is a high demand for the development of methodolo-gies to analyse and to assess time series of landscape structures, land use and landscape functions in the historical context of landscape development.