The publication publishes excursions of the Ljubljana Geographical Society, carried out between April 2015 and May 2019. If we break down individual contributions according to their main ...characteristics, we can point out some interesting findings. Let us first mention their concentration in the western part of Slovenia. Southwestern Slovenia stands out as an area of strong regional dominance, with the participants taking advantage of two excursions to the wide-open state border with Italy, created by Slovenia's entry into the Schengen area. The variety of excursions according to the method of implementation is also noticeable. As a rule, classic bus transport is enriched by walking. Completely different logistics were needed to carry out a cycling excursion through the Slovenian and Italian Karst. There is a continuing tendency for geographical knowledge to increasingly complement the content of other disciplines, especially archeology and ethnology, which certainly enriches excursions due to a different view of the landscape and emphases that geographers usually ignore or do not know much about.
This work discusses Slovenian geographical names: endonyms in Slovenia and in border areas inhabited by Slovenians in neighboring countries, and Slovenian exonyms used in Slovenian to describe ...geographical features outside the Slovenian settlement area. First, it gives a historical overview of dealing with geographical names in Slovenia and especially emphasizes their scholarly and cartographic significance. Then it presents macrotoponyms and microtoponyms, especially geographical names in Slovenian normative guides, names of countries, and foreign exonyms for Slovenian endonyms. All of this is connected with the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) and the Slovenian Government Commission for the Standardization of Geographical Names. The former body handles geographical names globally and the latter nationally.
Slovenian exonyms in North America Perko, Drago; Kladnik, Drago
Acta geographica Slovenica,
01/2017, Volume:
57, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The number of Slovenian exonyms around the world decreases with distance from Slovenia. This applies less so to North America, where their density is twice as high as in South and Central ...America.Based on a comparative analysis of geographical names from all important world atlases in Slovenian, we prepared two spreadsheets of Slovenian exonyms. The extensive spreadsheet has 5,038 names and the concise spreadsheet has 3,819 names. Each exonym has thirty-five thematic fields.In North America, marine hydronyms (21.1%) are the most numerous semantic type of exonyms, and completely translated names (77.9%) are the most numerous Slovenianized type of exonyms. Among the original languages of exonyms, English completely prevails (97.1%).The most commonly used Slovenian exonyms from North America in Slovenian texts are Dolina smrti ‘Death Valley’, Veliki kanjon ‘Grand Canyon’, Niagarski slapovi ‘Niagara Falls’, Skalno gorovje ‘Rocky Mountains’, and Aleuti ‘Aleutian Islands’.
In the second half of the twentieth century, Slovenian geography was characterized by gradual specialization and orientation of individuals into increasingly narrower areas of scholarly interest. ...Academy member Ivan Gams was no exception, focusing his research and teaching on karst studies. Throughout his work he preserved an exceptional research breadth, which is reflected in the wide variety of his contributions in all areas of physical geography; in addition, he also excelled as a regional geographer. His contributions in other areas of geography, which were by no means small, tend to pale in comparison. These reflect his constantly restless and critical research spirit, with which he helped shape Slovenia’s social developments in the recent past. Outside physical geography, Gams was primarily involved in studying geographical terms and names.
Over the past decades, attractive terraced landscapes composed of cultivated terraces have been increasingly dealt with in studies in geography, landscape architecture, ethnology, rural sociology, ...agronomy, pedology, and other spatial disciplines. Around 2000, several important research projects were carried out. The Terraced Landscapes Alliance (ITLA) was established, and terraced landscapes have also obtained their place within the European Geosciences Union (EGU) and EUCALAND. During this period, research on terraced landscapes has also intensified in Slovenia. All five articles featured in this special thematic issue of Acta geographica Slovenica are also briefly presented.
This article presents the findings of a study on long-term land-use changes in eight areas of various Slovenian landscapes. The emphasis is on comparing changes on terraced and non-terraced land from ...the early nineteenth century to the present and on a typological classification of land-use change, whereby a fifth type (i.e., extensification) is added to the established four types in Slovenia: afforestation, grass overgrowth, intensification, and urbanization. The article explains which factors have a decisive impact on land-use changes, especially in terms of abandoning terrace cultivation. The methodology used proves that there are important differences in the rate of land-use change between terraced and non-terraced land.
This article presents the current state of protection of terraced landscapes as an important type of cultural landscape, both globally and in Slovenia. The UNESCO World Heritage List, the Satoyama ...Initiative list, and the Slovenian Register of Immovable Cultural Heritage are analyzed. The findings show that terraces rarely appear as a factor justifying protection, even though certain progress has been made in recent years. At least globally, this has clearly been contributed to by the 2010 adoption of the Honghe Declaration. Slovenia shows both a lack of appropriate criteria for identifying terraced landscapes worth protecting and an insufficiently systematic treatment of heritage sites that are already being protected.
This paper provides an overview of traditional hay-making structures and the related agricultural landscapes in Europe. The information was collected using a standardised questionnaire that was ...completed by experts from different countries. What all countries had in common was that hay production with its corresponding structures was widespread. However, the scope and importance differed among the countries today. We found differences in type and extent, in degree of awareness, and in the cultural meaning of hay-making structures. The differences were connected with built structures, as well as with other tangible and intangible aspects of cultural heritage. The distribution of the broad variety of hay-making-related structures, especially semipermanent ones, has changed throughout history, as well as the hay-making techniques, as a result of agrarian specialisation, land reclamation, and consolidation. Today, in some countries, the relevance of hay-making was mainly connected to horse keeping and landscape management (like in Germany and Hungary), while in others (like Slovakia and Slovenia), it was still predominantly used for cattle and sheep.
Hay-making structures are part of the agricultural landscape of meadows and pastures. Hay meadows are still used and found all over Europe, but their distribution patterns as well as their ...characteristics and regional features depend on geographical area, climate, culture, and intensity of agriculture. Intensively used hay meadows are the most dominant, using heavy machinery to store hay mostly as rounded or square bales. Traditional hay-making structures represent structures or constructions, used to quickly dry freshly cut fodder and to protect it from humidity. The ‘ancient’ forms of traditional hay-making structures are becoming a relic, due to mechanisation and the use of new technologies. Both the need for drying hay and the traditional methods for doing so were similar across Europe. Our study of hay-making structures focuses on their current state, their development and history, current use and cultural values in various European countries. Regarding the construction and use of hay-making structures, we have distinguished three different types, which correlate to natural and regional conditions: (1) temporary hay racks of various shapes; (2) hay barracks, a special type of shelters for storing hay and (3) different types of permanent construction and buildings for drying and storing hay. Hay-making structures have been mostly preserved in connection with traditional agricultural landscapes, and particularly in the more remote regions or where associated with strong cultural identity.
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