Application of new methods of environment analysis and assessment in landscape audits : case studies of urban areas like Czestochowa, Poland

Following the 2000 European Landscape Convention, a new act strengthening landscape protection instruments has been in force since 2015. It sets forth legal aspects of landscape shaping (Dziennik Ustaw 2015, poz. 774) and introduces landscape audits at the province level. A landscape audit consists in identification and characterization of selected landscapes, assessment of their value, selection of so-called priority landscapes and identification of threats for preservation of their value. An audit complies with GIS standards. Analyses use source materials, i.e. digital maps of physical-geographical mesoregions, current topographic maps of digital resources of cartographic databases, latest orthophotomaps and DTMs, maps of potential vegetation, geobotanic regionalization, historic-cultural regionalization and natural landscape types, documentation of historical and cultural values and related complementary resources. A special new methodology (Solon et al. 2014), developed for auditing, was tested in 2015 in an urban area (Myga-Piatek et al. 2015). Landscapes are characterized by determining their analytic (natural and cultural) and synthetic features, with particular focus on the stage of delimitation and identification of landscape units in urban areas. Czestochowa was selected as a case study due to its large natural (karst landscapes of the Czestochowa Upland, numerous forests, nature reserves) and cultural (Saint Mary’s Sanctuary, unique urban architecture) potential. Czestochowa is also a city of former iron ore and mineral resources exploitation, still active industry, dynamic urban sprawl within former farming areas, and dynamically growing tourism. Landscape delimitation and identification distinguished 75 landscape units basing on uniform landscape background (uniform cover and use of the land). Landscape assessment used a new assessment method for anthropogenic transformation of landscape – the indicator describing the correlation between the mean shape index (MSI) and the Shannon diversity index (SHDI) (Pukowiec-Kurda, Sobala 2016). Particular threats and planning suggestions, useful in development of urban areas, were presented for selected priority landscapes

Historical and contemporary forest ecosystem changes in the Beskid Mountains (southern Poland) between 1848 and 2014

Landscape changes in the Carpathians are related to centuries of human activity, which can be regarded as the key component of global change. Changes in mountainous regions are mainly caused by agriculture, urbanization, forest cutting for production and land abandonment. This paper aimed to assess the impact of natural and historical-cultural factors on forest ecosystem transformations occurred in the period 1848-2014 in two small areas (about 45 km2) on the Beskid Mountains (southern Poland). The comparison of historical and current maps, along with the application of GIS and field verification, allowed a full interpretation of changes in land use in the studied areas. A decrease of 58.0% in non-forest areas was observed in the considered period, while the forested area grew systematically by 28.3% and the forest-field boundary lowered in altitude. Current forest ecosystems are distributed as a mosaic and mainly consist of Dentario glandulosae-Fagetum, Luzulo nemorosae-Fagetum, Abieti-Piceetum montanum, with logged sites taking up large areas. Forest ecosystems include valuable semi-natural meadows such as Gladiolo-Agrostietum, Hieracio-Nardetum, Arrhenatheretum medioeuropaeum, Cirsietum rivularis or Juncetum effusi, whose extension is reducing and fragmentation increasing due to the recolonization of forest tree species after abandonment. We concluded that trends in land use in the Carpathians were mainly determined by non-environmental factors related to the development of farming-pasturing and forest management. The applied approach could be extended to other regions in the Carpathians which were subject to analogous historical-cultural influences. Moreover, our results allow for a comparison with other regions which are subject to similar impacts of natural processes, but to different impact of historical and cultural processes