## 5 Discussion  
The analysis of historical images as a means of monitoring the developmental stages of village settlement produced very good results. Currently, the wide range of available high-resolution data offers opportunities to deepen our understanding of urban landscape based on remote sensing data. However, from the point of view of data unit processing, it is necessary to point out a few facts. Currently, the most suitable underlying freely available images by far are the KH-9 Hexagon images. However, it is necessary to precisely georeference these images and, above all, to combine several images from different missions. It is insufficient to rely on only one source (in this case one mission) in the elaboration of topographic site plans. The visibility of features depends on several factors. One of the most important is the shooting period. As in the case of the CORONA system, the ideal images come from the winter period, when there is dormancy and especially when the soil in these areas is sufficiently irrigated to make visible not only cropmarks, but especially soilmarks. To emphasize the visibility of these marks, suitable tools are post-processing image adjustment in the form of resampling, stretch type changing, and balancing of contrast parameters, or tonal adjustment using the gamma value. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account the location of the site within the image and its degree of distortion. Images that often have increased distortion outside their central point (both vertical and horizontal) caused by the non-perpendicular position of the cameras must be taken as additional parameters. Where they are used, increased topographical deviation during georeferencing and subsequent digitization must be taken into account. The morphological parameters of the mapped features become inaccurate in this case. An  
Figure 9: A view of the village of Qazbagi taken during a field survey in 2019 (author: [PERSON]). important factor that plays a significant role in the usability of images is the cloud cover that often obscures some of the features on the ground. Topographic analysis of a combination of historical and current remote sensing data demonstrates the need to use a multi-temporal approach to obtain an objective and realistic evaluation of the situation. Changes in the urban landscape can be detected using suitable data sources even when there is no possibility of direct field research of the site. The topographic development of the village of Qazbagi, observed in two main time periods (the 1970s and the beginning of the new millennium), demonstrates how well the changes in the layout of the village and its hinterland can be captured. Of course, the time span of almost 50 years presupposes the capture of a certain development of settlement activity and changes in the landscape. In the case of the model village of Qazbagi, we can speak of a two-stage transformation of village settlement, starting with the destruction in 1988 and ongoing resettlement, and completed by rapid, radical modernization in the second decade of the 21 st century. The rapid course of extinction processes is amplified by the active involvement of the inhabitants, who dismantle defunct homesteads into building materials, threatening a number of the original village settlements (Figure 10). Thanks to the involvement of basic research in oral history and field research verification, we were able to better interpret the developmental stages of the village, described on the basis of topographic analyses. The oldest form of the village offers a view of the original layout of the modern settlement, which can be characterized as a closed settlement unit, surrounded by extensive agrarian land with a close connection to water resources and irrigation systems. The appearance of the modern village, captured at the beginning of the new millennium, clearly shows a significant change in structure due to the total destruction of the original buildings during al-Anfal and subsequent resettlement.