This introductory article of the special issue of Acta geographica Slovenica on old maps examines the importance of old maps as the foundation and culmination of geographical research. Maps, one of ...the earliest languages of communication, have guided exploration and become reference documents. Old maps reveal history, values, and contexts of geographical regions and geographical science. They serve as a special form of text, making possible communication across centuries. Old maps have inspired fantasy maps that depict fictional landscapes and create a cultural phenomenon. This special issue contains articles that analyze the cartographic elements of old maps, the semiotics of old maps, their use in education, and their historical significance, as well as an article on the first Slovenian atlas. Old maps challenge geographic knowledge and representation, and they are shaping the digital future.
The Barrier Index is presented in this contribution. The index shows the extent to which spatial units of different sizes are closed off by barriers, influencing society by the different “thickness” ...and “thinness” of boundaries. The article defines the Index and compares land units with barriers in various details. The calculations were made for spatial units from the scale of parcels to one-hectare areas in selected types of regions, selected geographic regions, and border barriers in selected countries. The Index is useful for crossscale analysis and for identifying the underlying causes and relationships within different cultural, social, and geographical contexts. The example of spatially persistent family structures was used to highlight the underpinning influencing factors that connect the building of barriers at different scales.
The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical and conceptual introduction for the special issue on the interactions between food and territory manifested in gastronomy tourism. We focus on four ...perspectives: sustainability, the role of heritage, the potential for rural development and the networking of stakeholders. The contributions critically examine the development potentials but also the weaknesses of the growing gastronomy tourism. The case study approach and qualitative methods provide a detailed and concrete insight into the emerging challenges of host communities, tourism businesses and farmers, public policy makers and visitors. The special issue also provides applicable results for stakeholders involved in the strategic development, creation and consumption of tourism offerings.
Land registers, or cadasters, contain information on land use because this is vital for land assessment and taxation. Some European countries produced land registers covering their entire territories ...as early as the nineteenth century. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Habsburg Monarchy produced the Franciscean Cadaster, also known as the Stable Cadaster, which shows the traditional preindustrial cultural landscape and makes it possible to analyze land-use changes or the transformation of the traditional cultural landscape. This special issue is the result of collaboration between Slovenian and Czech geographers, and it features six articles covering land-use changes from the perspective of natural geography, political geography, ecosystems, farms, and metrics. The articles, which explore the processes of changes at the national and regional levels, are based on the textual part of the Franciscan Cadaster, and the local studies are based on the cartographic part of the cadaster.
This article presents a quantitative analysis of fictional maps and their relation to historic maps from different periods. Fictional maps are maps of imaginary territories. This type of map is now ...common in fiction, but they arose relatively late, in the second half of the nineteenth century, and are considered an independent branch of cartography today. They stand out through the way they are published because they are component parts of books and not independent cartographic works, and therefore their creators are not cartographers but rather the authors of these books. Fictional maps are mostly subordinate to the story, but they serve to give a sense of historical authenticity and draw the reader into the story. Without networks of coordinates and with labels such as 'the end of the world', they are spatially indeterminate, but they establish a connection between the fictional landscape and its identity. This study deals with 89 fictional maps from recent children's and young adult literature. First we present a historical overview of these works and fictional maps, and then a cartographic analysis of fictional maps. We examined seventy-seven books with fictional maps and evaluated the maps according to five groups of standard cartographic elements: natural elements, built elements, toponyms, mathematical elements, and explanatory elements. We discuss the differences between cartographic representation of fictional maps and historic maps, and build a cartographic model based on the frequency of cartographic elements to put fictional maps into historic and geographical contexts.
► While capacity building is a term increasingly used within policies, it is yet to evolve in scientific discourses. ► We define different types of capacity and then propose to distinguish between ...interventionist and participatory approaches. ► This framework is used to elaborate links to the topics of social vulnerability, risk communication and education as well as risk governance.
Social capacity building for natural hazards is a topic increasingly gaining relevance not only for so-called developing countries but also for European welfare states which are continuously challenged by the social, economic and ecological impacts of natural hazards. Following an outline of recent governance changes with regard to natural hazards, we develop a heuristic model of social capacity building by taking into account a wide range of existing expertise from different fields of research. Particular attention is paid to social vulnerability and its assessment, as well as to risk communication and risk education as specific strategies of social capacity building. We propose to distinguish between interventionist and participatory approaches, thus enabling for a better understanding of existing practices of social capacity building as well as their particular strengths and weaknesses. By way of conclusion, we encourage more research on social capacity building for natural hazards in the European context which at present is highly diverse and, at least in parts, only poorly investigated.
One of the methods of water resource management is to construct small retention ponds. Within the framework of the “Possible ecological control of flood hazard in the hilly regions of Hungary and ...Slovenia“ project the management of small ponds and their impact on flood prevention were studied in selected catchments. Data on pond management were gathered from interviews with pond owners. In a pilot study, we conducted an inventarisation and classification of all retention ponds. Primarily they were constructed for more specific use: fishing, irrigation, watering livestock. These functions have been gradually replaced by leisure-time activities, aesthetics, and tourism. Spring, stream and rainfall-fed ponds prevail in the pilot area and reduce the flood risk. Due to the increased variability of precipitation patterns ponds are also becoming an important measure to limit drought consequences at a local level.
The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical and conceptual introduction for the Special Issue on the role of green creative environments in sustainable urban and regional development. The idea ...is based on the assumption that concepts of creativity mostly address economic issues and to a lesser extent social issues, while green concepts predominantly deal with environmental aspects. Therefore, we lack a deeper insight into the interrelations between creative and green environments in urban and regional development. This special issue addresses this research gap through investigating 1) the residential preferences of the creative class in city-regional, urban and rural settings, 2) participatory urbanism as a tool for creative interventions in urban planning, and 3) the importance of green amenities as spatial attraction factors for small creative actors. We argue that green creative environments can contribute to sustainable urban and regional development.
We analysed spatial development of traditional and modern settlements on active alluvial fans in the Upper Sava Valley (NW Slovenia), by using old cadastral data from the beginning of the 19th ...century, time series of aerial photographs from the middle of the 20th century and recent building cadastre. The valley is surrounded by the mountainous Julian Alps in the south and the Karavanke Mountains in the north where there is a lack of space for settlements due to steep slopes that are increasing the danger of slope processes, torrential processes and floods. By using a very high-resolution 1m LiDAR digital elevation model, we defined the morphometry of alluvial fans and the characteristics of the drainage system of contributing tributaries. We classified the areas according to the threat posed by the modelled torrents and debris flows. We analysed the resilience of settlement in different periods from this perspective and evaluated the integration of natural processes effects in modern spatial planning projects. We found that geomorphic processes threaten a relatively large proportion of some new and old settlements on alluvial fans and that safe planning of areas of settlement has been successful neither in the past nor in recent decades.
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.
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