Socialiniai ir gamtiniai veiksniai Nemuno žemupio lygumos kraštovaizdžio formavime

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Gyvenvietės; Karšuvos lyguma; Kraštovaizdis; Miškingumas; Nemuno žemupio lyguma; Nemuno žemupis; Užnemunės lyguma; Forest areas; Karšuva plain; Landscape; Lower Nemunas plain; Settlements; The Lower Nemunas; Užnemunė plain; Wood density.

ENThe Lower Nemunas plain landscape is the largest glaciolacustrine plain in Lithuania. The Nemunas River divides it into two parts: Karšuva Plain in the north and Šešupė or Užnemunė Plain on the left bank of the Nemunas. This is one of few Lithuania's nature units belonging to different ethnographic regions with such a distinct boundary between them. The main goal of the present article is to elucidate the social and natural factors that caused the different distribution of forest areas in different parts of the same Lower Nemunas Plain. A negligible difference in natural conditions of both parts of the Plain allows the presumption that the unequal density of forest areas has been caused not by natural peculiarities of the area, but rather by the human impact. Historians say that the Lower Nemunas Plain remained uninhabited after the wars of Early Middle ages. But there is a reason to think that during the wars people could find shelter deeply in the Karšuva woods, where they could have settled and formed agrarian landscape patches. After the wars people could come back to the former areas. At the end of the 15th сentury and early in the 16th century not only the near-Nemunas area, but also the north-western part of the limnoglacial plain were inhabited. In the 16th century there were small land-use areas in the Karšuva Plain. Manors owned by sovereigns on the right bank of the Nemunas were obliged to control and protect the woods on the left bank of the river as well, i.e. the southern part of the limnoglacial plain. The state-owned lands in the Nemunas left-bank areas used to be donated or sold to private landlords, while the state border zone with the forests was owned by the state, i.e. by Grand Duke of Lithuania.The different land-ownership caused also different rates of inhabitation and economic development of both parts of the Lower Nemunas Plain. In the private land areas population used to change under the natural growth type, therefore their development was slower than in the state-owned land, where colonisation had been applied, i.e. free farmers and runaways used to be accepted. From a viewpoint of such internal migration, the best region was rarely inhabited Šešupė Plain that belonged to the Žemaitija ethnographic region; there were no state estates and no corvees. With the population increasing, more forests were felled and turned into arable lands. Therefore in the 18th century agrarian landscape prevailed in Šešupė Plain. There is another very important circumstance that affected the development of the southern part of the Lower Nemunas Plain. It is the neighbourhood of the largest Prussian trade centre Koenigsberg. The trends in development of the Šešupė Plain and the impact of Koenigsberg as a certain attraction zone on this process is reflected in the road network and distribution of farming lands at the turn of the 18-19th centuries. Karšuva Plain and the northern part of the Užnemunė area with small land-use practice remained forested by the 19th century. Only after demographic crises, regeneration of population and establishment of new small estates, as well as due to abolition of serfdom and increase of homesteads in number an essential development of the area started: in the first half of the 19th century for the northern part of Užnemunė, and the late 19th-early 20th century. Now the survived forests are remnants of the olden woods. [From the publication]

• Ekonomika / Economics
• Sociologija / Sociology