Changes in the Landscape and Vegetation Under the Influence of Prehistoric and Historic Man in Central Europe

verfasst von

Richard Pott

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to Holocene forest history with a special focus on prehistoric and historic human impact. As the original landscape is turned into cultivated land, humankind’s influence on the evolution and formation of central Europe’s cultivated landscapes is of major importance. Today’s central European woodlands are the result of utilization and forest change over centuries, locally even millennia. The central European climate is conducive to tree growth and all of central Europe would be a more or less monotonous woodland now if human beings had not created cultivated landscapes with their meadows, pastures and fields, continually pushing the forests back over recent centuries. This paper will focus on whether or not there would have been forest-free habitats of any significant size in the areas covered by deciduous and coniferous forests, that were created and cleared by herds of animals as open landscapes, in addition to the naturally forest-free habitats.

Organisationseinheit(en)

Institut für Geobotanik

Typ

Beitrag in Buch/Sammelwerk

Seiten

75-100

Anzahl der Seiten

26

Publikationsdatum

2018

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Ökologie, Evolution, Verhaltenswissenschaften und Systematik, Ökologie, Pflanzenkunde

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

SDG 15 – Lebensraum Land

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68738-4_4 (Zugang: Geschlossen)