Historic land use in the Netherlands
The dataset Historic Land Use in the Netherlands (HGN) consists of a number of nationwide GIS-files in which is shown how the Netherlands looked like at a certain moment in the past. There are HGN-files for 1900, 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990. The data about the land use are derived from old topographic maps. The HGN-files are a product of Wageningen Environmental Research.
HGN 1900
This is a raster file with a resolution of 50 meters. For each 50 * 50 meter gridcell a land use class is defined. The dataset is derived from the Chromotopographic Maps of around the year 1900. At least ten types of land use are differentiated: grassland, meadows/bare soil, heath and raised bog, deciduous forest, coniferous forest, built-up area and roads, water, sand/dune, reed marsh and other.
The scale ofHGN1900 is around 1 : 75.000.
HGN 1960, '70, ’80, ’90
These raster files have a resolution of 25m and are derived from topographic maps 1 : 25.000 around the year 1960, '70, ‘80, ’90.
The scale of the HGN datasets of 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990 is about 1:50.000.
Order information
You can contact the Geodesk (geodesk@wur.nl) if you want more information or if you want to place an order.
LGN
Recent information about land use in the Netherlands is available in the Land Use Database of the Netherlands (LGN).
Background information
The aim of the HGN 1900 project was to develop digital files with the land use of the Netherlands between 1850 and 1990, based on historical map material. The level of detail and the distinct classes had to be in line with recently developed land-use databases such as LGN (Land Use Database of the Netherlands).
One of the reasons for starting up the HGN1900 project was the demand for a spatial database of land use in the Netherlands around 1900 from the project “Juniper under pressure” (knol, 2004), for which a distribution map of juniper around 1900 was desired. This historical distribution map could be made using the LEDESS model (Harms et al., 1995) based on theoretical knowledge about the habitat conditions (ecotopes) of juniper. The historical ecotopes were derived from HGN1900 in combination with the soil map.
Information about the Geodesk