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

authored by

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.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Geobotany

Type

Contribution to book/anthology

Pages

75-100

No. of pages

26

Publication date

2018

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Ecology, Plant Science

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 15 - Life on Land

Electronic version(s)

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