The Integrated Approach to Landscape Management —Experience from Slovakia

Wetland Park Planning and Management Based on the Valuation of Ecosystem Services: A Case Study of the Tieling Lotus Lake National Wetland Park (LLNWP), China

The valuation of wetland ecosystem services and the construction of environmental landscapes are generally recognized as contributing to the sustainable development of human wellbeing. The valuation of ecosystem services plays an important role in planning for the recovery of degraded wetlands and in urban wetland park management; however, the role of the valuation of ecosystem services is always ignored. To bring more intuitive awareness to the importance of the ecological functions of wetlands and to rationally plan wetland parks, the Lotus Lake National Wetland Park (LLNWP), an urban wetland park in Northeast China, was selected as the study area. We referred to the millennium ecosystem assessment (MA) method and calculated the valuation of this park using the market value, benefit transfer, shadow engineering, carbon tax, and travel cost. ArcGIS was used for remote sensing interpretation. The research results were as follows. LLNWP was classified under seven types of land-use. The functions of the ecosystem services included provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services, and their total value in LLNWP was 11.68×108 CNY. Regarding the per-unit area value of the ecological service functions of different land types, it was found that forest swamp > herbaceous swamp > artificial wetland > permanent river > floodplain wetland. Combined with the characteristics of the functions of its ecosystem's services, LLNWP was divided into ecological and socio-cultural functions. Then, according to the main service functions of the different land types, we propose that the space in LLNWP can be reused, and proposal planning and management suggestions can be made with the aim of preserving the basic functions.

Impacts of Land Use Changes on Net Primary Productivity in Urban Agglomerations under Multi-Scenarios Simulation

Land use is closely related to the sustainability of ecological development. This paper employed a patch-generating land use simulation (PLUS) model for the multi-scenario simulation of urban agglomerations. In addition, mathematical analysis methods such as Theil-Sen Median trend analysis, R/S analysis, Getis-Ord Gi* index and unary linear regression were used to study the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of net primary productivity (NPP) for the impact of land use changes on NPP in urban agglomerations from 2000 to 2020 and to forecast the future trend of NPP. The results indicate that urban expansion is obvious in the baseline scenario and in the ecological protection scenario. In the scenario of cropland protection, the urban expansion is consistent with the land use plan of the government for 2035. The NPP in Beijing decreased gradually from northwest to southeast. The hot spot areas are concentrated in the densely forested areas in the mountainous areas of northwest. The cold spot areas are mainly concentrated in the periphery of urban areas and water areas. The NPP will continue to increase in forest and other areas under protection and remain stable in impervious surfaces. The NPP of Beijing showed a strong improvement trend and this trend will continue with the right ecological management and urban planning of the government. The study of land use in urban agglomeration and the development trend of vegetation NPP in the future can help policymakers rationally manage future land use dynamics and maintain the sustainable development of urban regional ecosystems.

Evaluation of Land-Use Changes as a Result of Underground Coal Mining—A Case Study on the Upper Nitra Basin, West Slovakia

Mining activity has one of the most fundamental influences on the landscape (in terms of both aesthetics and use). Its activity and manifestations, even when mining takes place underground, have visual manifestations on the surface. The impact of subsurface mining has a synergistic effect on the elements of the landscape structure. This manifestation is continuous in the context of mining intensity. Using the Earth remote sensing method, we identified several fundamental changes. The most significant of these was the creation of wetlands and the modification of watercourse lines. In the area in which there was no permanent water sources, several water areas with a total area of more than 30 ha were created. We also found that the length of watercourses has halved, the area of grassland has doubled, and urban area has decreased. It was the creation of water areas that supported not only better ecological stability of the landscape, but also the growth of biodiversity. Wetlands can be a dynamic element of future development. Understanding the development of land-cover changes is necessary for the purpose of planning nature and landscape conservation, as well as to identify areas of conflict with economic use.

The Impacts of Urbanisation on Landscape and Environment: The Case of Slovakia

The development of urbanisation is linked to qualitative and quantitative changes in the landscape and its components aimed at strengthening economic, administrative and cultural-social functions, which are associated with ever-increasing pressures on ecosystems and their individual components. These pressures are subject to various factors—socio-economic, political, environ-mental, etc. In this paper, we present an evaluation of the environmental impacts of the development of urbanisation in Slovakia. Independent Slovakia belongs to the young European states. The communist period lasted from 1948 to 1989. The character of landscape, the quality of the environment and also the degree of anthropisation of territory were dependent on a centrally managed economy. Urbanisation changes began to manifest themselves rapidly after 2000, when the economy was transformed and Slovakia was preparing to join the European Union (Slovakia joined the European Union in 2004). The transformation from central planning into a market economy was the basis of the changes, which was conditioned following strong pressure of investors on the landscape, the construction of technological parks, shopping and logistics centres and transport infrastructure and the construction of residential complexes. According to the European Environment Agency’s study on urban sprawl between the mid-1950s and the end of the 1990s, industry, commercial and transport services have grown at a significant rate and the residential areas at a moderate rate in Slovakia. On the other hand, Slovakia has areas where urbanisation has the opposite trend. Rural settlements are abandoned as well as large areas of agricultural land. The character of land use has fundamentally changed over the past 20 years. These changes not only have a spatial dimension but are associated with the emergence of various environmental problems. The paper deals with the impacts of anthropisation and industrialisation of Slovakia after 2000. The anthropisation process in Slovakia was determined through data processed in GIS and also through the statistical data representing land use. Based on the ecological significance of land use elements, the degree of anthropisation in Slovakiawas calculated.

Integrated Approach to the Management of the Landscape for the Implementation of the Danube Strategy

The EU Strategy for the Danube Region represents a new form of territorial cooperation. Its ambition is to establish a mechanism of joint responsibility of the countries in the Danube Region for the economic and social development respecting the preservation of natural and cultural heritage. The Strategy is built on four basic pillars: connectivity, building of prosperity, strengthening of the Danube Region and protection of the environment. The Strategy declares the necessity of interdisciplinarity and integrated approach to building a sustainable development of the Region. The scientific base of such an integrated management concerning the landscape and environment is in general the geosystem approach to the landscape, the managerial basement is the harmonisation of the development of the society with the natural, socio-economic and cultural-historical potential of landscape. The integration of both these bases needs a proper system of mutually complementary scientific methods and their implementation to the institutional tools convenient for the Danube Region. The goal of the article is to outline the possibilities for joining/implementation of scientific methods through legally supported tools to integrated landscape management and regional development.

Land-Use Dynamics in Transport-Impacted Urban Fabric: A Case Study of Martin–Vrútky, Slovakia

The paper evaluates landscape development, land-use changes, and transport infrastructure variations in the city of Martin and the town of Vrútky, Slovakia, over the past 70 years. It focuses on analyses of the landscape structures characterizing the study area in several time periods (1949, 1970, 1993, 2003); the past conditions are then compared with the relevant current structure (2018). Special attention is paid to the evolution of the landscape elements forming the transport infrastructure. The development and progressive changes in traffic intensities are presented in view of the resulting impact on the formation of the landscape structure. The research data confirm the importance of transport as a force determining landscape changes, and they indicate that while railroad accessibility embodied a crucial factor up to the 1970s, the more recent decades were characterized by a gradual shift to road transport.

Flood Risk Assessment for the Long-Term Strategic Planning Considering the Placement of Industrial Parks in Slovakia

The intention of the article is to demonstrate how data from historical maps might be applied in the process of flood risk assessment in peri-urban zones located in floodplains and be complementary datasets to the national flood maps. The research took place in two industrial parks near the rivers Žitava and Nitra in the town of Vráble (the oldest industrial park in Slovakia) and the city of Nitra (one of the largest industrial parks in Slovakia, which is still under construction concerning the Jaguar Land Rover facility). The historical maps from the latter half of the 18th and 19th centuries and from the 1950s of the 20th century, as well as the field data on floods gained with the GNSSS receiver in 2010 and the Q100 flood line of the national flood maps (2017), were superposed in geographic information systems. The flood map consists of water flow simulation by a mathematical hydrodynamic model which is valid only for the current watercourse. The comparison of historical datasets with current data indicated various transformations and shifts of the riverbanks over the last 250 years. The results proved that the industrial parks were built up on traditionally and extensively used meadows and pastures through which branched rivers flowed in the past. Recent industrial constructions intensified the use of both territories and led to the modifications of riverbeds and shortening of the watercourse length. Consequently, the river flow energy increased, and floods occurred during torrential events in 2010. If historical maps were respected in the creation of the flood maps, the planned construction of industrial parks in floodplains could be limited or forbidden in the spatial planning documentation. This study confirmed that the flood modelling using the Q100 flood lines does not provide sufficient arguments for investment development groups, and flood maps might be supplied with the data derived from historical maps. The proposed methodology represents a simple, low cost, and effective way of identifying possible flood-prone areas and preventing economic losses and other damages.