Long-term studies of land system change can help providing insights into the relative importance of underlying drivers of change. Here, we analyze land system change in Germany for the period 1883-2007 to trace the effect of drastic socio-economic and institutional changes on land system dynamics. Germany is an especially interesting case study due to fundamentally changing economic and institutional conditions: the two World Wars, the separation into East and West Germany, the accession to the European Union, and Germany's reunification. We employed the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP) framework to comprehensively study long-term land system dynamics in the context of these events. HANPP quantifies biomass harvests and land-use-related changes in ecosystem productivity. By comparing these flows to the potential productivity of ecosystems, HANPP allows to consistently assess land cover changes as well as changes in land use intensity. Our results show that biomass harvest steadily increased while productivity losses declined from 1883 to 2007, leading to a decline in HANPP from around 75%-65% of the potential productivity. At the same time, decreasing agricultural areas allowed for forest regrowth. Overall, land system change in Germany was surprisingly gradual, indicating high resilience to the drastic socio-economic and institutional shifts that occurred during the last 125 years. We found strikingly similar land system trajectories in East and West Germany during the time of separation (1945-1989), despite the contrasting institutional settings and economic paradigms. Conversely, the German reunification sparked a fundamental and rapid shift in former East Germany's land system, leading to altered levels of production, land use intensity and land use efficiency. Gradual and continuous land use intensification, a result of industrialization and economic optimization of land use, was the dominant trend throughout the observed period, apparently overruling socio-economic framework conditions and land use policies.

中文翻译：

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探索 1883 年至 2007 年间德国剧烈的制度和社会经济变化对土地系统动态的影响。

对土地系统变化的长期研究有助于深入了解潜在变化驱动因素的相对重要性。在这里，我们分析了 1883-2007 年期间德国的土地系统变化，以追踪剧烈的社会经济和制度变化对土地系统动态的影响。由于经济和制度条件发生了根本性变化，德国是一个特别有趣的案例研究：两次世界大战、东西德分离、加入欧盟和德国统一。我们采用人类对净初级生产的占用 (HANPP) 框架来全面研究这些事件背景下的长期土地系统动态。HANPP 量化了生态系统生产力中的生物质收获和与土地利用相关的变化。通过将这些流量与生态系统的潜在生产力进行比较，HANPP 可以持续评估土地覆盖变化以及土地利用强度的变化。我们的结果表明，从 1883 年到 2007 年，生物质产量稳步增加，而生产力损失下降，导致 HANPP 从潜在生产力的 75%-65% 左右下降。与此同时，农业面积的减少允许森林再生。总体而言，德国的土地制度变化出人意料地是渐进的，这表明对过去 125 年来发生的剧烈的社会经济和制度转变具有很强的弹性。尽管制度设置和经济范式截然不同，但我们在分离时期（1945-1989 年）发现东德和西德的土地系统轨迹惊人地相似。反过来，德国统一引发了前东德土地体系的根本性和快速转变，导致生产水平、土地利用强度和土地利用效率发生变化。作为工业化和土地利用经济优化的结果，逐步和持续的土地利用集约化是整个观察期内的主导趋势，明显超越了社会经济框架条件和土地利用政策。