Volume 4 (2011): Issue 1 (January 2011)

The aim of this paper is to contribute towards the successful management of heritage landscapes. Many cultural landscapes represent high heritage value and should be classified as heritage landscapes; therefore, special tools should be considered to be used in managing them. These landscapes should be evaluated according to heritage science criteria and good practice guidelines should be established. Several useful heritage landscape evaluation criteria were identified and characterised, and their relative importance was analysed, enabling the establishment of a heritage value hierarchy by means of a weighted linear combination. This is significant in the context of land management measures for countryside valorization promoting rural development.

However, this approach also requires awareness of the link between the present cultural landscape and the history of the people that have interacted with the area involved. This is also important for the establishment of a priority ranking system for monitoring criteria indicators. A method for doing this is also proposed by the authors.

This paper is an attempt to connect the General Theory of Resources (GTR) with the principles that guide the Landscape Ecology Principles (LEP). The recent GTR is based on the assumption that resources are the common requirement for individual species, populations, communities and ecosystems. We therefore describe the main characteristics of resources, while the biosemiotic mechanisms with which to track them are also discussed.

Moreover, and with a view to their reinterpretation, we have confronted the issues of patch shape, heterogeneity, corridors, ecotones and fragmentation with these GTR principles. According to the thesis presented in this paper, resources can be tracked using the specific spatial configuration carrier of meaning (the eco-field), while the major features of landscapes, such as size, shape and the distribution of patches, are used by organisms (animals) as a semiotic cue with which to identify eco-fields and associated resources.

Desertification of the Eurasian steppe biome brings serious problems to the natural environment, socio-economy and people's lives on both local and global scales. In the present study, we focused on the field/pasture-boundary in geographical land-use patterns, distributed in the Typical steppe zone (Stipa krylovii/Cleistogenes squarrosa/Leymus chinensis-dominant steppe) of Inner Mongolia, China, and assessed landscape structure and fragility through the interdisciplinary research. A study site was established in Wufuhao Settlement (41°11'42"N, 111°34'24"E; 1.2kmx2.0km; ca. 1615m a.s.l.), and field surveys consisting of vegetation mapping and sociological censuses were carried out during the 2002-2007 period. The results are summarized as follows: (1) a gently undulating hilly-landform stretched out, (2) since a mass immigration in the 1910's, natural vegetation has been changed into fields (63.9% of the study site) and Populus/Ulmus-plantations (8.6%), (3) 139 vascular plant species were detected, including crops, weeds and halophilous plants, and (4) five types of herbaceous plant communities were distinguished by TWINSPAN, coupled with the difference in micro-scale landforms, cultivation and grazing by livestock. Consequently, in spite of approaches for the environmental restoration, soil erosion by water-flows and winds, salinization, and the degradation of the remaining grassland vegetation, most of which having been caused by unsustainable field/stock-farming management, resulted in an irreversible destruction of the indigenous steppe landscape.

Classification and inventory of the current diversity of forest communities and their environments (i.e. site conditions) were developed based on Kolesnikov's topogenetic classification approach in Angara region (Central Siberia). This classification considers characteristics of forest regeneration dynamics, such as trends and rates of forest regeneration succession in a range of site conditions; therefore, it is used as a basis of a key for a forest regeneration dynamics map. An algorithm of forest regeneration dynamics mapping based on a spatial analysis of multi-band satellite data, a digital elevation model (DEM), and ground data combined with expert estimates of the resulting land cover classes was applied using geographic information system (GIS) "Forests of Central Siberia". Based on this algorithm, Landsat 7 ETM+ satellite imagery, SRTM-3- DEM, and field data were processed for the Angara test site. The resulting maps include two polygonal vector layers: one is forest regeneration stages (stand types) and the other is forest succession series (forest types) in a range of site conditions.

Forest edges represent specific elements forming the character of landscape. They are very important factors in ecological stability. To know and to understand them as a part of dynamic and hierarchic structure in vertical and horizontal shaping of the landscape contributes to understanding of the processes between forest and non-forested landscape in connection to influence of ecological factors towards broad knowledge of the country in the shape of its utilization and monitoring of its dynamic changes. The aim of the paper is to analyze in a geographic sense the types of anthropic forest edges in the area of Starohorské vrchy Mts. (on the example of Donovaly village) and their partial geographic synthesis in the frame of chosen attributes and forest edge functions. Basic question is whether human activity influences the dynamics of environmental variables, its structure, taxonomic diversity and other attributes of forest edges.