ABSTRACT
Research in long-term land-use changes in Czechia (Czechia is an official geographic name of the Czech Republic) in the period 1845 - 2000 led us, aside from assessment of changes in individual land categories and general land-use structure, to a search for major societal (political, economic, social, etc.) driving forces that influenced those changes. Czechia is a state whose development has been influenced by a number of large-scale political changes throughout the 20th century, which occurred in Europe, in particular Central Europe. These changes included: 1) fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1918; 2) events and processes resulting from World War II, i.e. occupation and separation of Czech borderlands along frontiers to Germany and former Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, following German occupation of the rest of the country and formation of "The Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia," which lasted from 1939 to 1945, and its war economy; 3) consequences of the transfer of Czech (Czechoslovak) Germans to Germany in 1945-47; 4) seizure of power by the Communist Party in February 1948; 5) the "Velvet Revolution" in November 1989, which meant a return to
democracy and reintroduction of the capitalist market economy; 6) consequent breakup of Czechoslovakia into two independent states in 1992-the Czech Republic (Czechia) and Slovak Republic (Slovakia).
