3.2 Analysis of land cover changes
Protected areas assume responsibilities not only for species individuals, communities and habitats but also for the protected landscape as a whole. Spatially explicit and fully covering information on the proportions and mosaicking of landscape compartments forms thus a fundamental basis of management. Adaptive management additionally requires methods to detect relevant changes in time as well as on an appropriate scale. Monitoring of structural borderlines can serve as an indicator for complex ecological interactions. This session aims to gather experience on the remote sensing based analysis of land cover changes in protected areas which are typically characterized by the manifold intermeshing of natural dynamics, direct human influence and climate change impacts.