Land Cover Disturbance due to Tourism in Czech Republic

Abstract

This research work assesses the impacts of tourism on the land cover in the Jesenik mountain region by comparing multi-temporal Landsat imagery (1991, 2001 and 2013) to describe the rate and extent of land cover change throughout the Jesenik mountain region. This was achieved through spectral classification of different land cover by assessing the change in forest; settlements; pasture and agriculture in relation to increasing distances (5, 10 and 15 km) from three tourism sites. The results indicate that the area was deforested (11.13%) from 1991 to 2001 than experienced forest regrowth (6.71%) from 2001 to 2013. In first decay pasture and agriculture area were increase and then in next decay it were decrease. The influence of tourism facilities on land cover is also variable. Around each of the tourism site sampled there was a general trend of forest removal decreasing as the distance from each tourist site increased, which indicates tourism does have a negative impact on forest. However, there was an opposite trend from 2001 to 2013 that indicate conservation area. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.