GIS tools for comparing historical and contemporary landscapes through local maps series

Summary Our Project of the GIS based Spanish Ancient Cartography e-Library was firstly presented in the 3 rd Workshop of the ICA Commission on Digital Technologies in Cartographic Heritage (Barcelona, Spain, 2008), and afterwards in the Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia Dedicated to Cultural Heritage VSMM'08 (Limassol, Cyprus, 2008). Since then we have applied some of the GIS tools to the study of the evolution of some Spanish landscapes between the 15 th and the 19 th centuries. By means of the georeferencing of the map images and the use of tools such as transparency and the geometric transformations, we have superposed the ancient maps and views to a composed map of the same areas of the First Series of the Mapa Topografico Nacional 1:50.000 dating from the second half of the 19 th century. The conclusions show that the changes in the landscape involve not only the geographic elements, but also the land uses, the landmarks and the boundaries, as well as the road and the urban frames.