Vanishing landscape of the “classic” Karst: changed landscape identity and projections for the future

Continuous change over an area of 238 km2 of the “classic” Karst in Slovenia, previously severely deforested, has resulted in a change of the landscape identity in last 250 years (from 1763/1787 to 2012): grasslands declined from 82 to 20% and forests progressed from 17 to 73%. The Multi-Layer Perceptron model was validated before making predictions for further landscape change using the Markov chain method: a predicted map for 2009 was produced and compared with an actual one. Image similarity statistics indicate 89% similarity and the spatial distribution of predicted grasslands agrees in 98% of locations. The prediction estimates that grasslands will cover 18 km2 less in 2025 than today and will then shrink to just 6 km2 (3%) in 2100. The speed of grassland overgrowing was calculated on 2.2 km2/year. Forest area will expand by 18 km2 until 2025, compared to 2012. In 2075, forest will cover 88% of the whole study area, and will reach 90% in 2100, achieving then an almost steady-state situation. Calculation of the spatial change trend for grasslands enabled us also to determine where in space the overgrowing process will occur during each of the predicted periods. Congruent aspects of changed landscape identity (e.g. landscape beauty, diversity, and wilderness) are discussed, but according to legal obligations regarding the conservation of Natura 2000 grassland habitats, the management with grassland remnants (5% of grasslands was already lost after the Slovenian accession to EU in 2003) are suggested to be incorporated in landscape planning.