The city of Ljubljana lies at the intersection of various geomorphological regions that have strongly influenced its spatial organization. Prehistoric settlements were built on marshland, a Roman ...town was built on the first river terrace of the Ljubljanica River, and in the Middle Ages a town was built in a strategic position between the Ljubljanica River and Castle Hill. The modern city absorbed all usable space between the nearby hills. This paper reviews some relief features in Ljubljana, their influence on the city’s spatial development, and urban geoheritage. The results indicate new possibilities for urban geoheritage tourism in the Slovenian capital and its surroundings.
Field mapping is an accurate but also time consuming method of detailed mapping of habitat types. Levels of habitat types are usually hierarchically nested at several levels. Our main research ...question therefore is: ‘How detailed can be modelling of habitat types with decision trees and digital data in karst landscape?’ Similar to studies in other (non-karst) environments we explored the basic properties of the habitats in Dinaric Karst study region (Classical Karst in Southwest Slovenia) and tested modelling of habitat types at three different levels of detail. To seek for the best set of predictor variables we used Rapid-Eye satellite images, airborne images and digital elevation model. We prepared more than 60 explanatory variables and divided habitat polygons into training and testing samples to validate the results. The results proved that modelling with decision trees in Dinaric Karst landscape does not result in high accuracy at high detailed levels. Due to the presence of mine fields in the large area of Dinaric Karst (
. in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) the field mapping in this area is difficult therefore the findings from this study can be used for further development of mapping through remote sensing.
Various ice bodies are an important source of paleoenvironmental data, and their study improves the understanding of present and future environmental conditions. Their changes are an important ...indicator of climate change. This special issue of Acta geographica Slovenica draws attention to the changing and disappearing cryosphere across the globe, with an emphasis on the southeastern Alps, and the necessity to conduct research in this field before the ice disappears forever. This paper briefly summarizes the current body of knowledge on glaciers, permafrost, cave ice, lake and river ice, and snow in the southeastern Alps, and it presents the contribution of Acta geographica Slovenica to this research and the main highlights of all five papers included in this special issue.
The main purpose of this analysis is to identify places in Europe that can be described as very diverse according to various natural landscape types or landscape regions. In order to obtain these ...“hotspots,” several geographical divisions of Europe were examined. The analysis was performed for most of Europe at 5 km resolution. First, maps of landscape variety were produced based on each division of Europe taken into account. This step was carried out for each cell by counting the number of different unique natural landscape types or regions that are present in a radius of 50 km around the cell. Several maps of landscape diversity were produced using this method. Each of them was then weighted; the cell values were divided by the number of all unique types or regions in a division. In the final stage, all of the maps were synthesized (averaged) into one map showing landscape diversity for Europe. With this data it was possible to determine Europe’s landscape hotspots and to define the most naturally heterogeneous countries. Among all of the European countries, Slovenia has the highest average landscape diversity; the highest absolute landscape diversity is located in the Norwegian part of southern Scandinavia.
Cultivated terraces distinctively mark the landscape and are a result of human adaptation to steep areas. Terraces were studied with regard to their morphometric qualities, ownership structure, and ...land use at eight pilot sites in various landscape types in Slovenia. Twenty-six detailed interviews were carried out with local residents and experts. In current agricultural practice, terraces mostly represent obstacles, and for owners they create a loss rather than profit; however, they represented an advantage in the past, when they were cultivated manually. Land use is intensifying on economically profitable terraces. Among those examined, the Jeruzalem terraces stand out because these are the youngest ones (created in socialist Yugoslavia around 1965). Because of their aesthetic value, they are the best known among the public. Profitability in particular will be an important driving force for the future maintenance of terraces.
We have evaluated the digital data layers according to their relevancy in establishing the natural landscape types of Slovenia. To find out which digital data layer (e.g. slope, temperature regime) ...can sufficiently reveal differences among potential Slovenian landscape types, each layer was compared with the map of landscape-ecological types that was produced by a group of geographers. We used different methods (e.g. gain ratio, Mann-Whitney U test, Spearmann correlation coefficient, decision tree) to select and to test the most appropriate data layers.
Central settlements in Slovenia in 2016 Nared, Janez; Bole, David; Breg Valjavec, Mateja ...
Acta geographica Slovenica : Geografski zbornik,
01/2017, Letnik:
57, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article presents central settlements in Slovenia and their main characteristics in 2016. We defined central settlements based on services of general interest and the population of an individual ...settlement, and developed the analysis further by using competitiveness indicators. We defined 360 central settlements at six levels of centrality, among which the significance of Ljubljana as a national center of international importance and the significance of intermunicipal, local, and rural centers are increasing. The significance of certain regional centers at the second and third levels of centrality is decreasing. The level of services of general interest supplied to Slovenian territory is relatively appropriate, but it should be improved by promoting competitiveness, especially in centers of national and regional importance.
The proposed European Union indicators for defining areas less suitable for agriculture in Slovenia are not entirely appropriate because taking them into account would omit some distinctly and ...clearly unsuitable areas–for example, Suha krajina (Dry Carniola) and Bela krajina (White Carniola)–and farmers would be unjustifiably financially harmed. In such a case, every European Union member state has the right to propose an additional indicator to reduce such discrepancies. With regard to actual natural conditions, in Slovenia especially some karst landscapes would be unjustifiably omitted, and so we have proposed a karst indicator as an additional criterion based on the distribution of karst (i.e., carbonate) rocks. Through spatial coverage of karst rocks and soils, we determined whether more reasonable and less strict application of European criteria regarding soil could be satisfactory for better results in defining areas less suitable for agriculture in Slovenia.
In several Central European countries, land use changes can be analysed on the basis of the Franciscan Cadastre. The main aim of the paper was to analyse land use dynamics with the Franciscan ...Cadastre and modern land use data. The study was carried out by calculating land use structure and landscape metrics for a part of Slovenske Gorice region in Slovenia. The analysis showed that the forest area expanded, and fields and vineyards areas diminished. In general, today’s landscape is made of less patches, but they are larger and of more irregular shapes.
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