Volume 38 (2019): Edition 4 (December 2019)

The growing development of settlements in mountainous areas and their sustainable development constantly requires new approaches to assess the land in terms of occurrence of landslides. The flysch zone, where the monitored area is located, is one of the most landslide prone areas in Slovakia. Landslides respond sensitively to the quality of the individual factors that form the landscape and to the change of natural conditions. Their occurrence is a geo-barrier that reduces or totally prevents the use of natural environment and negatively affects the life of population and territorial development. The reason for the increased hazard of landslides is not only demographic pressure on territories, but also its poor management. Consistent spatial planning addresses not only the spatial layout but also the functional use of the territory. Landslides represent one of the limits of land use. This study is based on the assessment of landsliding as a limit to possible territorial development. The input parameters for the assessment were elements of the current landscape structure (built up structure, forest stands, transitional woodland-shrubs, traditional agricultural land, permanent grasslands and arable land) and occurring landslides (active, potential and stabilized). On most of the determined elements of the landscape, landslides occur on about a quarter of their area. They have a smaller share only in areas of mixed forests, built up areas and have the smallest share on arable land. Potential landslides have the largest proportion on all landscape elements. They occupy the largest areas on coniferous forests (1578.93 ha) and on permanent grasslands (741.33 ha). By evaluating the overall endangerment of the area by landslides according to the degree of threat, we found that the greatest threat of landslides is in the Skalité and Svrčinovec cadastral areas, the smallest threat is in the Čadca cadastral area. In addition to the danger of landsliding in the individual elements of the landscape, we have also set limits for its development. Spatial planning limits have been divided into two categories according to the sectors they affect the most: limiting the development of an area assigned for residential building, or restricting the development of an area designed for agricultural and forestry purposes.

Snowbed vegetation is one of the most sensitive alpine vegetation type to the climate change, because shortened period of snow cover has essential impact on the snowbed environment. We focus on its changes in the Western Tatras, which is a part of the Western Carpathians (Slovakia). The assessment of changes in snowbed vegetation is based on the method of pair comparison. In 2016–2018, we resampled 21 historical phytocoenological relevés of Festucion picturatae and Salicion herbaceae alliances from 1974 and 1976. Historical data include 45 species, while recent data include 50 species. We observed a decrease in the frequency of species characteristic for snowbeds and, on the other hand, an increase in that for strong competitors, especially grasses and small shrubs from adjacent habitats. According to Ellenberg’s ecological indices, there is some increase in temperature and decrease in light ecological factors in snowbed habitats. In S. herbaceae data, a statistically significant increase in the average species number was observed with new species that penetrated from the adjacent habitats. Changes in species composition between historical and recent data are confirmed by Non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) ordination diagram. Linear mixed-effect models showed big variability in factors that have impact on phytodiversity; nevertheless, temperature is the most significant factor.

The natural site of El-Mergueb, is one of the specific steppe ecosystem, that occupies an area of 16,481 ha; it is among the particular ecosystems in Algeria and is unique in northern Africa. It is located in the geographical limit of the Tell Atlas and the Saharan Atlas. It is at an altitude of 550 to 800 m, with a typically arid climate. The faunistic and floristic richness, quite specifically, contains species protected and classified in the IUCN: Chlamydotis and Gazella, as well as an autochthonous plant diversity: Stipa, Pistacia and Ziziphus. This study is based on the analysis of the vegetation by characterizing the associated soil type through the monitoring of the Eco-pedological relation during two seasons in three years: 2015−2016−2017. Nine soil profiles with a collection of twenty-one samples for each station of experimentation were collected. The results thus obtained showed that the content of the parameters analyzed is between low and average of the three stations. The average of the floristic analysis of the study area made it possible to define 34 botanical families spread over 69 botanical genus and 275 species. The analysis and the description of a natural space is important to establish a typology which is that is the basis for the development of management plans to conserve this category of protected areas. The FAC (Factorial Analysis of Correspondence) is relative to the individualization and the typology for three sequences, which corresponds to the groups (A), (B) and (C) also for the places in arid climate variants with very cold winters.

The FORKOME model used in the article contains elements of forest and ecological approaches and was specially developed for the conditions of the Gorgans. The modeling was performed based on the single simulation results and statistically averaged forecast of 200 simulations (“Monte Carlo”) in order to show the tendency of changes and their correspondence with single simulations. The forecast of the forest dynamics was conducted at the 100th anniversary period with “control” and “warm-dry” scenarios. It has been revealed that the rapid decrease in biomass in the first decade was caused by Norway spruce decline. It was revealed that in the control scenario, the most active biomass growth during the 100th year forecast was shown by Silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) and beech (Fagus sylvatica L.). The fir reacted relatively sensitively to the warming and decrease in rainfall. The relationships between tree species and the influence of biomass of Norway spruce tree on the biomass of the whole forest tree stand were analyzed.

This paper examines the temporal dynamics of terrestrial mollusks of the Nikopol manganese ore basin technosols. The research was carried out at the Research Centre of the Dnipro Agrarian and Economic University in Pokrov (Ukraine). Sampling was carried out in 2012–2014 on four variants of artificial soil: formed on red-brown clays, on loess-like loams, on gray-green clays, and on humus-rich layer. The distribution of the number of individuals in a mollusk population was described by broken stick, Motomura, log-normal, Zipf, and Zipf-Mandelbrot models. It was shown that the series of models that best describe mollusk abundance distribution is specific for a particular species and technosols type and generally is invariant over time.

Knowledge and study of breeding birds’ biology is essential to understand the dynamic, assess productivity and identify threats. The population of booted eagles (Hieraaetus pennatus) was studied during three consecutive breeding seasons (2013−2015) in the Chettabah forest. Each year, arrivals of Booted eagles are recorded during March (15 individuals in 2013, 12 in 2014 and 11 in 2015). For the three years of study, the mean breeding pair’s density was 1.23 ± 0.153/km², incubation period ranged from 33 to 38 days, whilst the frequency distribution of clutch size was 67.6% for 2 eggs, 27% for 1 and 5.4% for 3. Amongst the 63 eggs monitored, 55 hatched. No significant variation in hatching rate was observed during the 3 years (90% in 2013, 76.19% in 2014 and 84% in 2015). The comparison of breeding parameters with those reported in Spain showed a noticeable similarity. Further investigations should be conducted to improve the provision of information to support sound management interventions of this North African population.

The paper is aimed at the presentation of the new conception of nature protection. The new conception is based on the creation and protection of the representative geoecosystems. The strategic aim of defining the representative geo-ecosystem is: to determine a representative geo-ecosystem for each territorial unit on the given hierarchical level - the regional principle, to determine a representative occurrence for each type of the geo-ecosystem – the typological principle. The list of types of representative geo-ecosystems should serve as an ecologically based systematic framework for new protected areas (according to the analysis of unsufficiently protected representative geo-ecosystems) designations, as well as for methodical proposals of biocentres of the territorial system of ecological stability. The new approach to nature conservation is based not only on the protection of life forms but also on the protection of living conditions.

The paper presents an example of the creation of representative geoecosystems on the regional level–Trnava region.