Ecosystems in Slovakia Černecký, Ján; Gajdoš, Peter; Špulerová, Jana ...
Journal of maps,
12/2020, Letnik:
16, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The authors have prepared a detailed map of Slovakia's ecosystems, which identifies individual ecosystems and their spatial distribution, status, and selected properties. The impetus for the ...production of this map is the need of various stakeholders, especially nature protection bodies, forestry management, agricultural management and public administration, for better data on the distribution of ecosystems. The methodology mostly involves using GIS analytical tools to combine datasets on nature protection, forestry, and agriculture which list attributes related to habitat identification. The results can be used for ecosystem services assessment, spatial planning, nature protection analysis, and other related purposes. The spatial precision of the data is determined by that of the field data, which was mostly created at scales between 1:10000 and 1:5000. The data are stored in the form of a geodatabase containing more than 1,000,000 polygons.
Landscape provides many services for human wellbeing through its mosaic of ecosystems. Although different landscape spatial structures limit some access to these services for local residents, their ...demand for landscape benefits creates a crucial component in landscape planning. Herein, we evaluate the ecosystem service supply from landscape structures in four different areas of Slovakia and we identify the public preferences for these services. This evaluation was assisted by expert-based ecosystem services (ES) matrix assessment and feedback from experts and key local stakeholders. The associated land cover assessment revealed that although forests are the most important for ES delivery, followed by extensive agricultural mosaics, cultural services have the highest average supply value. In contrast, the experts and local stakeholders considered that provisioning services were the most important of all ES groups because of products available from arable land. The overall public awareness of benefits provided by nature proved relatively high, and this is a good sign for the development of multi-functional landscapes. The comparison of study sites revealed that even stakeholders living in intensively used land, with its overall low ES supply, assessed ES as very important in general. The general public could therefore be included in environmental planning to promote a more multi-functional landscape. In addition, the analysis herein will communicate gained insights to the local planners and decision-makers and confirm the importance of this ES participatory approach using top-down methodology. This may require the following measures in Slovakia: establishing an interdisciplinary group of experts for regular assessment of strategic landscape planning documents and regulatory instruments, developing key directives which establish well-balanced participatory procedures, improving open local government, and supporting down-scaled implementation of integrated landscape planning in cooperation with local action groups.
The main aim of this study is to assess the benefits provided by the ecosystems of traditional agricultural landscapes (TAL) and compare them to the outputs of large-scale agriculture. Assessment of ...ecosystem services (ES) was performed in four case-study areas situated in Slovakia, representing different types of TAL: Viticultural landscape, meadow–pasture landscape, and agricultural landscape with dispersed settlements and mosaics of orchards. The methodological approach was focused on assessment of all the principal types of ES—regulation and maintenance, provisioning, and cultural. Differences in the provision of ES due to the impact of different practices and intensities of agricultural landscape management were subsequently assessed and compared. The results show that TAL are generally more diverse and balanced regarding ES provision, mainly because of their varied patterns and their related functions. In particular they play an important role in water retention and the prevention of soil erosion—both important with respect to changes in climate. Modern intensive agriculture is principally able to fulfil the production functions. Support for traditional farming, landscape diversification and small-scale agricultural management is vital for enhancing the values of rural regions. Such measures could become key drivers for sustainable agricultural management in Slovakia, and elsewhere.
The vagueness of the concept of ‘sustainable development’ ceased to serve as a consensus platform and instead became a source of controversy. Therefore an instrument is needed to measure whether we ...are striving towards sustainable development or not. Today the most widely used indicator of economic prosperity is gross domestic product (GDP). It is often incorrectly interpreted as an indicator of quality of life. If, however, GDP is considered to be quality-of-life indicator, it is a misleading indicator as GDP does not cover the services people conduct outside the official market. As a result, environmentalists together with economists have long been cooperating in designing an alternative indicator capable of better capturing the development of society. Even though GDP is good for measuring economic performance, it is highly misleading as an indicator of the quality and sustainability of life. This article describes briefly the most relevant alternative indicators to GDP developed during last two decades including Czech and Slovak methodology of the Quality and Sustainability of Life Index.
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.
Climate and land use change can profoundly impact the provision of ecosystem services (ES) over time, particularly in the landscape of open fields along with growing urbanization and rising demand ...for space, food and energy. Policymakers are keen on knowing the combined effects of climate and land use change on ESs as a critical issue in human well-being. However, deep knowledge of how to identify these relationships is still lacking. This research aims to undertake a comprehensive assessment of soil- and water-related ES, and improvement in understanding how they are affected by climate and land use change. We applied the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs model for four ES (soil retention, nutrient delivery ratio, carbon storage, and water yield) for the years 2000 and 2018 in the Nitra region, Slovakia. We investigated the spatial and temporal changes in ES provision and determined the hotspots and coldspots of multiple ES. We found that soil retention, water yield, and carbon storage display a rising trend while the nutrient delivery ratio showed a decreasing trend over the past 18 years. Although all the mentioned services mainly attributed to land use change, the relative contribution of climate change was not deniable. Forests in the north and east and distributed urbanization and agriculture are the hotspots and coldspots for all ESs, respectively. Our results, in terms of determining the relative importance of land use and climate change and identifying the sensitive areas of ES provision, provide a scientific basis for ecosystem conservation and management priority setting at the local and regional levels.
The issue of urban sustainability is currently exceptionally up to date, and the sustainable development of cities has become an important topic on the political level. Many cities in the world are ...facing acute challenges concerning growing dangers to the environment and ensuring quality of life for their inhabitants. In connection with cities achieving their individual goals of sustainable development, urban sustainability indicator frameworks (USIFs) are becoming the subjects of attention. Such frameworks enable sustainability to be clearly measured and assessed. In this article, we analysed selected global and European USIFs in terms of their commonalities and differences, sustainability dimensions, thematic categories, and categorised indicators. Based on the analysis of the content of the reviewed frameworks, we compiled a list of generally recognised thematic categories within the four main dimensions of sustainable development, and we identified the key indicators of urban sustainability. Our review showed differences in the existing approaches that substantially contributed to the current inconsistencies in assessing and measuring sustainable development in cities. Our results provide an overview of this issue, e.g., to decision makers, and could concurrently serve as a generally applicable foundation for the creation of new urban sustainability indicator frameworks. We also point out the current trends and challenges in the domain of urban sustainability assessment.
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.
•We study trends in greenspace planning in Slovakia.•The paper addresses potentials of and barriers to urban green infrastructure.•The findings are cross-compared with findings from other European ...countries.•Bottom-up actions and mediatory interventions can improve greenspace planning.•We propose a participatory integrated planning model.
Cities provide a locus for sustainability: they will soon accommodate most of the world’s population, just as increasing environmental and climate emergencies and socio-economic inequalities constitute major challenges. The concept of urban green infrastructure (UGI) offers a greenspace planning approach based on a grounded set of principles to improve the environmental health and liveability of cities. A wide variety of greenspace planning and implementation approaches is already being applied within and across countries. This paper employs UGI as a research lens to critically evaluate planning trends in Slovakia on national, regional and local levels. To this end we have analysed planning documents, interviewed greenspace agents and evaluated local good practice. Our results indicate weak instrumental support for UGI planning, as well as other systemic and procedural barriers to green infrastructure. Moreover, a comparison with observations from other European planning systems reveals notable commonalities and differences. The paper then discusses a local greening programme and bottom-up actions as potential ways to foster green infrastructure development. Local practitioners can initiate important planning processes by employing nature-based practices, engaging with stakeholders and promoting functional approaches. We propose a participatory integrated model that utilises the opportunities embedded in bottom-up actions. Our model can be adopted in higher-level planning and policymaking if appropriate operational and mediating interventions take place.
Similar to other post-communist countries, Slovakia has undergone significant changes in the last decades-largely through transformation of central planning into a market economy. Unfortunately, this ...process has been associated with increasing pressure on surrounding ecosystems and their individual components. These changes are subject to various influences, e.g., socio-economic, political and environmental; in addition, urbanisation has also had great influence. This is typified by conversion of productive agricultural land and semi-natural ecosystems into built-up area accompanied by the negative ecological impacts of habitat deterioration and fragmentation. The rapidly changing consumption patterns of luxury living, transportation and leisure have increased the negative consequences on ecosystems and these compound the negative environmental trends. This paper evaluates land use changes in Trnava, which is one of the most rapidly developing cities in Slovakia. Evaluation covers 1838-2015, with explicit emphasis on transformation over the last 25-30 years. We present comparison with developments since 1990 in other cities in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany and then discuss the main processes and environmental problems related to these changes, concentrating on the sustainability of current trends and appropriate planning and management responses.
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