Changes in the Land Use of the Active Floodplain in Bodrogzug

Abstract

In this work, I determined the roughness conditions of the flood plain in an area of 523 ha in the southern part of Bodrogzug based on aerial photographs from 1965 and 2016. The inspiration for conducting the tests was the three recordings that were made of the area at the beginning and in the middle of the 20th century, and in the early 2000s. Based on the two previous recordings, the roughness of the area may have been much smaller than today due to the short grass pastures and the small amount of woody vegetation. To determine the roughness values, I used the categories developed by CHOW V. T. (1959) and NÉMETH E. (1959). The plant cover values recorded at the two times show significant differences. The proportion of very dense forests increased greatly, with the weighted roughness increasing by two and a half times in 2016 compared to 1965. This significantly reduces the speed of flood waters, which can lead to gradual siltation of the area. At the same time, the direction of landscape development is developing favourably, as the area's biodiversity is increasing.