Effect of land use change on ecosystem services in Lake Balaton Catchment

Land Use and Land Cover Changes (LULCC) are interrelated with other global processes like global climate change, population growth, land degradation etc. Land use structure of a given area, region is adapted to the requirements of human society since the appearance of human beings. Land use structure is understood as the proportion of land use types orruring in a given area. The objective of the paper is to analyse land use changes in Lake Balaton catchment, Hungary and to present the role of changes of one ecosystem service, i.e. recreation and tourism by quantitative methods, based on spatial and statistical databases of land use and tourism in Lake Balaton catchment, Hungary between 1990 and 2012. The study area is a frequented touristic region of Hungary with variegated and beautiful landscape mosaics. The lake (595 km(2)) is exposed to various kinds of environmental impacts including agricultural activities and tourism. For the quantification of the Recreation and Ecotourism Ecosystem Service potential the Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) method was applied. Land use changes between 1990 and 2012 were identified from the CORINE Land Cover Database and evaluated from ecological aspects and from the aspect of ecosystem services. The main changes include a continuous increase of the forest area and a remarkable on-going decrease of arable land. Soil erosion as the main land degradation process in the area endangering the quality of ecosystem services. The remarkable decrease of arable fields reduces erosion risk. Ecosystem services provided by each land use type were analysed. The main conclusion is that long term trend of land use changes is beneficial for ecosystem services.