1253 | 630 | The results of digitizing historical maps: land use structure of Lithuania in the 19th century | Eglė Piškinaitė, Darijus Veteikis

Historical maps are the unique source of information for land use / land cover (LULC) studies. Scientific value of historical maps increases remarkably when they are in digital form and georeferenced. Statistical data being preferred as the main source of information for a long term LULC change studies in Lithuania. The reason for this might be just a lack of georeferenced historical maps. To fill this gap we georeferenced 27 sheets of the period 1846 to 1872 topographical map of Russian Empire covering the territory of modern Republic of Lithuania. We present the results of processing the mentioned set of analogue historical map sheets into a digital map of land use in the 19 th century Lithuania. Georeferencing was based on using ground control points. We discuss the overall insignificant errors obtained from joining the georeferenced sheets of this historical map. The reconstruction of the LULC structure of Lithuania in the 19 th century was attained by manual digitizing (vectorising) preferred against the automated means because of the technical specifications of the map. All data was merged into five land use categories: 1) forests, 2) wetlands, 3) built-up areas, 4) water bodies and 5) other, mostly including arable land, grassland and pastures. The reconstructed land use structure of the 19 th century was checked for the compatibility with the spatial data of CORINE land cover of 2018, the main LULC change trends assessed. We think, that the first digital map of land use of Lithuania from period 1846-1872 is suitable to carry out quantitative analyses of LULC change and other studies in various academic fields.

Eglė Piškinaitė, Darijus Veteikis
Vilnius University

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ID Abstract: 630