Analyses of Archival Cartographic Materials for Geomorphological Changes of River Channel

Abstract

In Lithuania, the old archival topographic maps of locations of small and medium scale and 1 : 10,000 scale contour photo plans were created on the basis of aerial images. The material of these scales provides documented records on the condition of the objects in the location and the landscape at the moment of aerial photography. Those maps can be used to restore the accurate topographic image of the terrain and buildings in 1945–1951 and in later years and perform the necessary topographic, photogrammetric, and geodetic measurements of the parameters of objects, to identify the location of objects and changes. This information is necessary for a variety of disputed property issues and for building farmhouses in reserves, in areas of forestry land parcels, and for assessment of changes in the landscape. Studies of landscape changes are needed for the assessment of renaturalization processes. This paper presents the geodetic method used for geomorphological changes at the channel of River Žalesa during the period 1942–2017, based on the collected archival cartographic materials: historical topographic maps from archive of the Lithuanian State Company Land Fund, Land Information System, and land management projects and orthophoto maps from Lithuanian spatial information portal and free open-access Sentinel-1 satellite data from the Copernicus Open Access Hub.

There Used to Be a River Ferry: Identifying and Analyzing Localities by Means of Old Topographic Maps

“…Old topographic maps have also found application in other fields and subsectors of science, including, but not limited, to assessing geomorphological processes and climate changes by monitoring the extent of mountain glaciers [34], estimating the impact of transport on land use [35], and combining spatial planning and population behavior in relation to transport safety [36]. In the case of river systems, old maps are often utilized to examine the long-term development of river bodies [37][38][39] and water infrastructure objects [40,41], especially in studying the intensity of the geomorphological processes of a river flow [42] or searching for links between the current riparian landscape and the original paths of watercourses [43].…”