Dr. Wolfgang Göderle

Landscapes in the Anthropocene

Cadastres are among the largest and most complex representations of knowledge of the 19th century. They store information on land use, infrastructure, settlement, watercourse, vegetation and tenure, which makes them an excellent source for studying long-term changes in these areas. However, due to the enormous amount of data contained in the cadastre, the small scale, and the complexity in which information is stored in this representation, extracting this knowledge at a higher scale is extremely challenging.

In order to better understand changes in land use, vegetation, infrastructure and settlement structure in Central Europe over a period of 200 years, and to be able to investigate the influence of these changes on the Anthropocene in a more targeted way, I would like to present TransPLAnt (Transformations in Past Landscapes in the Anthropocene). TransPLAnt is based on the Franziszeische Kataster, which was carried out in the Habsburg Empire between 1816 and 1861, and covers in a uniform manner over 300,000 square kilometres of Central Europe. Building on our own experience and preliminary work, the first step is to extract the information stored in this knowledge formation on a large scale with machine learning support.  The knowledge thus gained about Central European landscapes in the mid-19th century is subsequently used to model said landscapes and also to reconstruct them visually in digital form.