Cultural ecosystem services (ESs) are assessed less often than other ES; however, their importance for human well-being is crucial. In this article, we focused on an assessment of capacity and flow ...of three selected cultural ES – Recreation and tourism, Natural and cultural heritage and Aesthetics and landscape character. The capacity in terms of cultural ES focuses on the potential of landscape features to provide cultural ES, while flow provides us with data about areas where these cultural ES are consumed by people. We can assume that in areas with higher capacity to provide cultural ES, there is also a higher flow of these services. The areas with the highest capacity to provide selected cultural ES are natural areas, such as natural and semi-natural meadows, pastures, alpine areas and wetlands, and cultural-historical sites. Such areas in our study area are the Malá Fatra National Park and areas with dispersed settlement, which we rank as the most valuable parts of the microregion Terchovská Valley. There are also areas with the highest flow of cultural ES. To know the relationship between the capacity of the landscape to provide cultural ES and the flow of cultural ES in this study area could be useful in terms of landscape protection and management.
This article provides an overview and results of the pilot national ecosystem services assessment in Slovakia. It follows the MAES process and past ecosystem services (ES) research in Slovakia and is ...based on original research methodology using spatial and statistical data. The initial step of national ES assessment resulted in the selection of significant ES for the evaluation process, where 18 ES in three groups were selected (five provisioning, 10 regulatory/maintenance and three cultural ES). An original assessment model provided the theoretical and methodological framework for national ES evaluation. The principal result is an assessment of the national landscape’s capacity for ES provision, based on evaluation of the landscape units and selected properties and indicators at the ecosystem level. These inputs included habitat types and watersheds, administrative units, natural topology, geology, soils, climate, water and biota. The ES capacity models were created and evaluated for each ES, for the main groups and, finally, for overall ES provision. The highest capacity to provide ES in Slovakia comes from natural and semi-natural ecosystems, mainly deciduous, mixed and coniferous forests which cover over 38% of Slovak territory. The water ecosystems and wetlands are also significant, followed by grasslands and permanent crops. The research highlights the crucial importance of the mountainous and sub-mountainous areas in Slovakia and confirms the significant contribution of the natural and semi-natural ecosystems for ensuring ES provision.
Cultural ecosystem services (CES) have specific richness and diversity provision patterns related to particular landscape features and land cover forms. Studies of their spatial distribution, ...however, are quite rare in the Slovak Republic and surrounding countries. This paper links land cover information based on an ecosystem services (ES) matrix, field survey data and GIS method to assess CES supply in two selected Slovak regions. Our main focus is on the ecologically more valuable ‘hot-spots’ where socio-cultural values accumulate. We determined their spatial distribution, and our comparison with lower cultural value areas confirmed that mountainous landscapes have the highest capacity to provide CES. This especially applies to the landscapes under National Park protection. While Slovak forests, rocks and water areas also form essential ecosystems for overall CES provision, the lowest overall capacity is in areas with residential buildings, construction, industrial and other artificial habitats. Finally, a comparison of our results with the National Ecosystem Assessment indicates that our detailed CES assessment will be more effective in supporting future participatory planning and management processes.
Dispersed settlement, known as a type of settlement where settlement units are dispersed in the area, has several functions in present days. It is used by residents but it is often used by cottagers ...as well. Mainly those settlement units that are farther away from the village or town centre. The village Terchová as a centre of tourist traffic in Micro region Terchovská dolina offers a lot of recreational possibilities. Beside summer and winter activities in Malá Fatra National park, there is also an option of a weekend recreation in marginal parts of the village Terchová in the area with dispersed settlement. House fund of dispersed settlement is used mainly by cottagers during weekends in remote parts of this area that are not suitable for residents. The main aim of this article is to focus on weekend recreation as a tool for preserving landscape character, characteristic traits of dispersed settlement and land use.
In this paper we focus on the evaluation of land use changes in the cadastral areas of the cities Martin and Vrútky. Both cities are situated in the Turčianska kotlina Basin between the Malá Fatra ...Mts. and Veľká Fatra Mts. in the northern part of central Slovakia. Establishment of new industrial enterprises in the second half of the 20th century led to the creation of new infrastructure, urbanization and the subsequent interconnection of both cities. Railway transport and the ŽOS Vrútky company (Railway Repair Shops and Engineering Works) that has existed longer than 130 years had significant influence on the development of the area. The aim of this paper is to compare and evaluate changes of secondary landscape structure in Martin and Vrútky between the years 1949 and 2016. For spatial data processing and creating map layers we used the QGIS 2.16 geographic information system. From the analyzes of landscape elements we identified the most dominant land use changes as agricultural intensification, urbanization and industrialization. Identification of land use changes is useful for urban planning and creating scenarios for possible further development of the cities.
Declines in biodiversity have corroborated view of scientists to promote ecosystem services to gain support for conservation of the nature from people of all ages all over the world. The ecosystem ...services are sparsely characterized in education literature and they are not included in the most recent iteration of Slovak standards for lower secondary education. In this paper we are introducing the concept of ecosystem services and discuss why it is an important idea to teach in lower secondary education. Main aim is to present set of conceptual ideas of how to include interdisciplinary field of ecosystem services into geography. Our approach provides an opportunity to use several teaching methods to help students make connections between modern technology and ecological, geographical and social systems. Simultaneously, it is a brand-new approach of connecting students through modern technology and ecosystem services with landscape and improve their perception in the regional geography.
PDF
