Volume 20 (2016): Edition 4 (December 2016)

In this paper we study Zipf’s law, which postulates that the product of a city’s population and its rank (the number of cities with a larger or equal population) is constant for every city in a given region. We show that the empirical literature indicates that the law may not always hold, although its general form, the rank-size rule, could be a good first approximation of city size distribution. We perform our own empirical analysis of the distribution of the population of Polish cities on the largest possible sample to find that Zipf’s law is rejected for Poland as the city sizes are less evenly distributed than it predicts.

This paper presents the results of the urban indicators analysis conducted within Warsaw’s ventilation corridors from 1992 to 2011. The literature review shows that the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) index is one of the best indicators to detect urban development; therefore, this was the core of the analysis. Three periods were analysed (1992 – 2002 – 2011), as such a long time-span allows the assumption that change will be visible. The ventilation corridors were divided into 500 m and 100 m grids and the FAR index was calculated for each cell. The results highlight alarming changes within some of the corridors, indicating areas that are crucial to sufficient air flow in Warsaw.

The determination of the Presheva Valley as a special region highlights the need for theoretical analysis and the use of different methods and principles which enable geographical regionalization. The Presheva Valley represents a natural continuation of the Albanian ethnic territories. With a very convenient position in terms of geography and transportation, as well as its geostrategic and geopolitical basis, it has been occupied by many invaders throughout different periods of history. Under the current administrative, political and territorial division of Serbia, the municipalities of Presheva and Bujanoci belong to the Pčinja district, based in Vranje, while the municipality of Medvegja belongs to the Jablanica district, based in Leskoc. The Presheva Valley has had the status of special region in various periods, but since it shares historical, ethnic and demographic characteristics with other Albanian ethnic territories, it has frequently been separated for the purpose of the assimilation of the Albanian people.

The aim of this paper is to determine the contemporary differences in the inflow of global solar radiation in Warsaw (urban station) and Belsk (rural station). The meteorological data used comprised daily sums of global solar radiation (in MJ•m⁻²) and the duration of sunshine (in hours) for the period 2008 2014. On clear days in spring and summer, the rural area receives more solar radiation in comparison to the urban area, whereas in autumn a reverse relationship occurs. On cloudy days in all seasons, the rural area receives more solar radiation than the urban area, and the relationship is the strongest in winter. Differences between urban and rural areas on cloudy days are smaller than those observed on clear days.

One of the conditions for effective water resources management in protected areas is local decision makers’ knowledge about potential threats caused by climate changes. Our study, conducted in the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve of Tuchola Forest in Poland, analyses the perception of threats by local stakeholders. Their assessments of the sensitivity of four lakes to the extreme weather events are compared with hydrological studies. The survey shows that the lakes’ varying responses to extreme weather conditions is rarely noticed by ordinary observers. Their perception is usually far from the hydrological facts, which indicates a lack of relevant information or a failure in making it widely accessible and understandable. Moreover, it is rather the human impact, not climate change, which is seen as the biggest threat to the lakes. Insufficient environmental knowledge may hinder the effective protection and management of natural resources, due to bad decisions and lack of the local communities’ support for adaptation and mitigation policies.

Physical processes in soil-plant-water system are very complicated. Complex physical processes in soil, in particular interaction between soil-plant-water system have significant influence on processes in Planetary Boundary Layer. Changes of soil state can significantly modify processes in the PBL and meteorological fields. Since numerical models are to determine the forecast of high quality, the physical processes occurring in soil should be properly described and then appropriately introduced into a model. Every process in soil occurs on a smaller scale than original model’s domain, so it should be described via adequate parameterization. Overall, soil parameterizations implemented in current numerical weather prediction (NWP) model(s) were prepared almost 40 years ago, when NWP models worked with very poor resolution mesh. Since nowadays NWP works over domains of high resolution, these “old” schemes parameterization must be adequately revised. In this paper preliminary results of changes of parameterization of soil processes will be presented.

The purpose of the undertaken survey is to assess the accuracy of the SSE2009, based on a reference dataset. The dataset contains 3,600 samples with the same spatial resolution as the final Soil Sealing Layer product and covers a rectangle of 36 km². The basis for assessing the accuracy was the photointerpretation of the orthophotomap. The overall accuracy with data division into 6 classes amounted to 65%; while divided into 2 classes: sealed and non-sealed reached 95%. The evaluation results accuracy may form the basis for future improvements in evaluation methods impervious surface.