Ostrava-Karviná Mining District;Anthropogenic landforms;Landscape development;Land cover;Industrialisation

The Ostrava-Karviná Mining District is the most significant black coal mining area in the Czech Republic. Underground black coal mining significantly affected the landscape in the whole region. Waste heaps, submerged ground subsidences and tailings ponds have become the main anthropogenic landforms. In the Ostrava part of the district, where the thickness of coal seams was less, more extensive mining-related surface change did not occur to such an extent as it happened in the Karviná area. The Ostrava area can be described as a landscape affected by mining and industry but with maintained residential purpose. In the mining landscape of the Karviná area, original housing estates disappeared in many places to be replaced with mostly semi-natural areas of trees, scrub and/or herbaceous vegetation associations.