Slovenia is affected by extreme and intense rainfall that triggers numerous landslides every year, resulting in significant human impact and damage to infrastructure. Previous studies on landslides ...have shown how rainfall patterns can influence landslide occurrence, while in this paper, we present one of the first study in Slovenia to examine the impact of climate change on landslides in the mid-21st century. To do this, we used the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 climate scenario and future climatology simulated by six climate models that differed from each other as much as possible while representing measured values of past climate variables as closely as possible. Based on baseline period (1981-2010) we showed the number of days with exceedance of rainfall thresholds and the area where landslides may occur more frequently in the projection period (2041-2070). We found that extreme rainfall events are likely to occur more frequent in the future, which may lead to a higher frequency of landslides in some areas.
Objective climate classification of Slovenia Kozjek, Katja; Dolinar, Mojca; Skok, Gregor
International journal of climatology,
August 2017, 2017-08-00, 20170801, Letnik:
37, Številka:
S1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
ABSTRACT
In the study, the climate regions of Slovenia were determined. The regionalization was based on the gridded climate data for the reference period 1981–2010. The climatic regionalization was ...performed predominately objectively with a combination of two statistical methods; the factor analysis which was followed by k‐means clustering. With the use of factor analysis the initial number of 31 climate variables was reduced to four variables or factors, which comprised the input for the cluster analysis where Slovenia was divided into six climate regions: Submediterranean climate region, Wet climate of hilly region, Moderate climate of hilly region, Subcontinental climate region, Subalpine climate region and Alpine climate region. Compared to previous climatic regionalization studies for Slovenia, the presented study uses a higher degree of objectivity in the determination of the extent and borders between climate regions. The current study was based purely on climate data, while in the previous studies, the borders were defined more subjectively, based on the authors' expertise of local climate.
•Multiple types of evidence yield an overview of the disturbance regime in Dinaric Mountain forests.•Variation in regime components from multiple agents results in a complex disturbance ...regime.•Intermediate severity disturbance events are characteristic of the regime.
Quantitative descriptions of natural disturbance regimes are lacking for temperate forest regions in Europe, primarily because a long history of intensive land-use has been the overriding driver of forest structure and composition across the region. The following contribution is the first attempt to comprehensively describe the natural disturbance regime of the dominant forest communities in the Dinaric Mountain range, with an emphasis on the range of natural variability of regime components for the main disturbance agents. Compared to other forest regions in Europe, the mountain range has a history of less intensive forest exploitation and provides a suitable record of natural disturbance processes. Our synthesis is based on multiple types of evidence, including meteorological information, historical documentation, evidence from old-growth remnants, and salvage logging data from National forest inventories. Taken together, the results show that no single disturbance agent dominates the regime in the dominant forest types (i.e. beech and mixed beech-fir forests), and any given agent exhibits remarkable variation in terms of severity and spatial extent both within and among individual disturbance events. Thunderstorm winds cause the most severe damage (i.e. near stand replacement), but blowdown patches are typically limited to stand-scales (e.g. 10s of ha). Ice storms and heavy snow typically cause intermediate severity damage and affect much larger areas (e.g. 100s of km2). A notable exception was the 2014 ice storm, which was nearly an order of magnitude larger and more severe than any other event recorded in the synthesis. Severe and prolonged periods of drought have occurred several times over the past century, and along with secondary insect damage (e.g. bark beetles), have caused episodes of forest decline. Overall, our synthesis indicates that on top of the background of relatively continuous gap dynamics, stand-scale intermediate severity events are an important part of the regime; these events likely have rotation periods that are less than the lifespan of a tree cohort (e.g. several centuries) and create canopy openings large enough to alter successional trajectories.
In the current economic and social crisis affecting Europe, dialogue is of great importance. The reaction of the EU to the present situation is evident from various discussions and documents. ...Following the ambitious Lisbon Strategy, a document created during a period of economic growth for most of the Member States, we now have before us the Europe 2020 Strategy. In this article, the author explores the contents of this strategy in light of the implementation of its goals of multilevel governance.
Abstract
In northern temperate forests, ice storms are a common disturbance agent, though climate change may alter their occurrence patterns. Their impact on forest ecosystems is complex, as they ...influence both structure and processes. In 2014, an ice storm of high intensity and large spatial extent occurred in Slovenia, Central Europe, which enabled a detailed study of ice damage to individual trees across a broader spatial scale. Pre- and post-ice storm measurement data on 11 414 trees on 960 permanent plots were used to examine ice damage patterns on trees in the disturbed forest area (~8700 km2) to determine the predictors of ice damage to trees and to investigate the relative susceptibility of eight groups of tree species in mixed Central European forests. We used a novel approach to modelling ice-storm intensity across the region based on measured data on air temperature, precipitation amount and duration, precipitation intensity and wind speed. The ice storm damaged 31 percent of the analysed trees; high variability in the damage rate was observed across the disturbed area. For the tree species, a susceptibility to ice damage index (SI) ranging between 0 (no damage) and 1 (complete damage) was calculated based on terrestrial assessment of trees. Tree species differed significantly in susceptibility to ice damage: Abies alba (SI = 0.14) and Quercus sp. (SI = 0.11) were rather resistant; Picea abies, Fagus sylvatica and Acer sp. (SI = 0.23–0.28) were moderately to very susceptible; and Pinus sp. (SI = 0.62) was extremely susceptible to ice damage. Eight predictors and three interactions were included in an ordinal logistic regression model of tree damage: ice damage on trees depends mainly on ice-storm intensity, elevation and tree species, whilst tree dbh and social status, tree size and tree species diversity indices and slope were relatively less important. Our study illustrates the complexity of damage patterns on trees due to ice storms and the significance of ice-storm intensity and tree species as predictors when modelling ice damage on individual trees.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents an attempt to obtain high‐quality data series of monthly air temperature for Slovenian stations network in the period from 1961 to 2011. Intensive quality control ...procedure was applied to mean, maximum and minimum air temperature datasets from the Slovenian Environment Agency. Recently developed semi‐automatic homogenization tool HOMER (HOMogenisation softwarE in R) was used to homogenize the selected high‐quality datasets. To estimate the reliability of homogenized datasets, three to six experts independently homogenized the same datasets or their subsets. Different homogenization parameter settings were used by each of the experts, thus comprising ensemble homogenization experiment. Resulting datasets were compared by break statistics, root‐mean‐squared‐difference (RMSD) of monthly and annual values, and RMSD of the long‐term trend. This semi‐automatic homogenization approach based on metadata gave more reliable homogenization results than a fully automatic approach without metadata. While the network‐wide linear trend of the dataset did not change after semi‐automatic homogenization was applied, the distribution of the trends of individual stations became spatially more uniform. The arithmetic mean of the homogenized datasets of three experts was assigned as a reference homogenized dataset and it was compared with some publicly available homogenized datasets. The calculated linear trend on an annual level for Slovenia is strongly positive in all datasets, though the trend values are significantly different between the datasets. We conclude that the warming trend of near‐surface air temperature in Slovenia in 1961–2011 is significant and unequivocal in all seasons, except for autumn. Mean, maximum and minimum temperature series indicate linear trend of around 0.3–0.4 °C decade–1 on an annual level.
The main object of the presented study was the creation of a high-resolution monthly temperature climatology for the greater Alpine region (GAR). This climatology, which is determined from ...observational averages for the period 1961-1990, necessitated a multinational, high-quality temperature dataset, in which especially inhomogeneities due to different methods of means estimation had to be regarded. Based on multilinear regression techniques and regionalisation, significant model improvements could be reached by adjusting for mesoscale effects in cold air pools, coastal and lakeshore belts, urban areas and slopes. The final 1x1 km grids allowing temperature description of the orographically complex Alpine terrain with an accuracy of 1 °C have been made available for further applications at the web pages of the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics.
The objective of the present study is the calculation of the spatial distribution of sunshine duration in the territory of Slovenia. Four maps at 1 km resolution were prepared to present the spatial ...distribution of sunshine duration for winter, spring, summer and autumn. The values on all four maps are 30-year mean seasonal sunshine duration, calculated from measurements from 43 meteorological stations in the period 1971–2000. The seasonal presentation was chosen due to the high inter-seasonal variability in spatial distribution of sunshine duration. The values on the maps were calculated on a mathematical horizon, to avoid the influence of geographical, urban and vegetation distortions. The interpolation model is a combination of a multivariate regression model, residual kriging and simple mathematical models. Geographical variables (altitude, latitude and longitude) are used in models to explain the spatial variability of sunshine duration. For each season, regionalisation is performed based on sunshine duration data, derived geographical data and radio-sounding data. The interpolation models are developed for each region separately and afterwards the calculated layers are merged using GIS techniques.
In the last 3
years in Slovenia we experienced extremely hot summers and demand for cooling the buildings have risen significantly. Since climate change scenarios predict higher temperatures for the ...whole country and for all seasons, we expect that energy demand for heating would decrease while demand for cooling would increase. An analysis for building with permitted energy demand and for low-energy demand building in two typical urban climates in Slovenia was performed. The transient systems simulation program (TRNSYS) was used for simulation of the indoor conditions and the energy use for heating and cooling. Climate change scenarios were presented in form of “future” Test Reference Years (TRY). The time series of hourly data for all meteorological variables for different scenarios were chosen from actual measurements, using the method of highest likelihood. The climate change scenarios predicted temperature rise (+1
°C and +3
°C) and solar radiation increase (+3% and +6%). With the selection of these scenarios we covered the spectra of possible predicted climate changes in Slovenia.
The results show that energy use for heating would decrease from 16% to 25% (depends on the intensity of warming) in subalpine region, while in Mediterranean region the rate of change would not be significant. In summer time we would need up to six times more energy for cooling in subalpine region and approximately two times more in Mediterranean region. low-energy building proved to be very economical in wintertime while on average higher energy consumption for cooling is expected in those buildings in summertime. In case of significant warmer and more solar energy intensive climate, the good isolated buildings are more efficient than standard buildings. TRY proved not to be efficient for studying extreme conditions like installed power of the cooling system.
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