Four windows on Borderlands: Dimensions of place defined by land cover change data from historical maps

Perceptions of land cover changes from four areas located on the borderlands of Prekmurje, north-eastern Slovenia were determined from a set of historical maps. The principle goals of this research were the calculation of changes in area of land cover categories and analysis of the stability of the study areas from the perspective of land cover. Two approaches were applied to the map analysis: “stability mapping” followed by proportions of different land cover categories determined by time series cartography. Finally, these approaches were triangulated with ground truthing. The results presented demonstrate conclusively that the studied region maintained relatively stability although over several centuries inhabitants withdrew very slightly from both natural boundaries and political borders. As “windows” into the environmental psychology of borderland perception, each small site studied revealed some specifically localised characteristic

Forest bioresource utilisation in the Eastern Mediterranean since antiquity : a case study of the Makheras, Cyprus

In this work the author explores the pre-historic and historic influences on two Cypriot forests in order to compile a definitive record of the evolutionary ecology of the forest environments in response to human impact and utilisation since antiquity. The scope included the following: An extensive field survey of the afforested landscape to record species types and specific site ecology and to assess the impact of historic settlement patterns within the forest; To correlate changing forest patterns discerned from the palaeobotanic record with known human associations; To define species habitat in relation to ore bearing geological material and archaeological sites; To ascertain the current level of biodiversity; To propose a base-line for the rehabilitation of the forest environment. The information provided has been collated from observations recorded during a systematic survey of the Makheras and Adelphi Forests, Cyprus, over a period of seventeen months. An important aspect of the data recorded was a number of ancient archaeological sites, previously not thought to exist in the forest areas