Uncertainty in Historical Land-Use Reconstructions with Topographic Maps

The paper presents the outcomes of the uncertainty investigation of a long-term forest cover change analysis in the Polish Carpathians (nearly 20,000 km²) and Swiss Alps (nearly 10,000 km²) based on topographic maps. Following Leyk et al. (2005) all possible uncertainties are grouped into three domains - production-oriented, transformation- oriented and application-oriented. We show typical examples for each uncertainty domain, encountered during the forest cover change analysis and discuss consequences for change detection. Finally, a proposal for reliability assessment is presented.