Sources to the landscape - detailed spatiotemporal analysis of 200 years Danish landscape dynamics using unexploited historical maps and aerial photos

Historical cartographic material in the form of maps and aerial imagery remains one of the main data sources available to landscape scientists studying changes in land use and land cover. The use and analysis of such sources is widespread, and most contemporary scholars in the landscape sciences use historical maps and imagery to relate their findings to landscape history. Especially the recent transition from a landscape dominated by feudal societal structures to today’s urbanized landscapes with intensive agriculture, has been intensively studied. This approach in some cases suffers from lack of sources or limited accessibility to data material, often forcing scholars to reduce the spatial or temporal coverage of their studies. This is to some extent the case in Denmark. Despite the existence of a relatively large quantity of historical cartographic material, which have increased due to declassification of military maps and aerial photos from the cold war, only relatively few sources have been made available to researchers due to lacking efforts in digitalization and related services. And even though the digitizing of cartographic material has been accelerated, the digitally available materials are still limited when compared to the large amount of potential available analogue maps and images. Also limited knowledge about the sources and their origin still exist, often limiting the temporal resolution of land change studies to the already scanned maps provided by the Danish Survey and Cadastre or to the commercial photo series from the last 20 years.
This poster outlines a new research project focusing on the potential of unexploited cartographic sources for detailed analysis of the dynamic of the Danish landscape between 1800 – 2000. The project draws on cartographic sources available in Danish archives, libraries and government agencies. This includes sources, such as orthophotos from the US Air Force, RAF, Luftwaffe and Danish authorities and private companies. Also topographic maps from 1850s to 2000s are included. The initial objective is to assess the potential gain of using a large quantity of material in landscape change studies giving a high temporal and spatial resolution. The project also deals with the opportunity and constrain of comparing different cartographic sources with diverse purpose and time of production, e.g. different scale and quality of aerial photos or the difference between military and civilian maps. The approach is based on two case studies at the ‘ejerlag’ cadastral administrative level focusing on getting a detailed spatiotemporal analysis of the landscape dynamic.