Effects of Landscape Changes on Species Viability: A Case Study from Northern Slovakia

Urbanization, increasing road networks, agricultural intensification, and land abandonment are widespread land change processes found in most European landscapes. As land changes affect animal species and their populations, there is a need to evaluate the effects of future developments on the viability of protected species. In this paper, we model population size and viability of selected indicator species for a selected area in Slovakia. Our results indicate that selected species are viable in the current landscape composition. However, the expected spread of settlement and the increase of road density in this area would likely lead to decline and loss of viability of species. Similarly, continuous land abandonment followed with spontaneous reforestation would likely trigger a decline of grassland species. In contrast, developing a biocorridor and restoration of existing green elements as modeled in our conservation scenario would strongly improve the viability of all species and avoid the impact of the expected developments. Our results underline the actions that prevent further loss of biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes and, thus, have particular importance for landscape planning and decision-making processes

Actual vegetation of cultural landscape in northern Slovakia (study area in the Poprad basin)

ABSTRACT This paper reviews actual vegetation of a cultural landscape in northern Slovakia, under High Tatra Mountains National Park -UNESCO Biospere Reserve. We identified amount of types of actual vegetation units based on CORINE Biotopes methodology supplemented with geobotanical research. We noticed many abandoned biotopes in agricultural landscape before used as mown meadows, pastures or arable land. Forest zones on borders of the study area -parts of bigger nature areas appear highly fragmented and their species composition is far from potential natural vegetation. Chosen area should also fill a function of national park's buffer zone, therefore there should be paid more attention for proposals for agricultural landscape structure optimization in the central part of the study area and biodiversity restoration in peripheral forests

Effects of landscape changes on species viability : A case study from northern Slovakia

Urbanization, increasing road networks, agricultural intensification, and land abandonment are widespread land change processes found in most European landscapes. As land changes affect animal species and their populations, there is a need to evaluate the effects of future developments on the viability of protected species. In this paper, we model population size and viability of selected indicator species for a selected area in Slovakia. Our results indicate that selected species are viable in the current landscape composition. However, the expected spread of settlement and the increase of road density in this area would likely lead to decline and loss of viability of species. Similarly, continuous land abandonment followed with spontaneous reforestation would likely trigger a decline of grassland species. In contrast, developing a biocorridor and restoration of existing green elements as modeled in our conservation scenario would strongly improve the viability of all species and avoid the impact of the expected developments. Our results underline the actions that prevent further loss of biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes and, thus, have particular importance for landscape planning and decision-making processes.</p