Natura 2000 is a network of European protected areas, established under the provision of two directives of the European Union: the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) and the Birds Directive (79/409/EEC; 2009/147/EU). The Natura 2000 network can be considered an interesting instrument to maintain and improve ecosystem services provided by protected sites. The European Union member countries are free to organize the participatory process in the implementation of the Natura 2000 network. The participatory process is often overlooked despite it being an important tool to increase the social acceptance and reduce conflicts among stakeholders with different interests. The aim of the present study is to investigate the stakeholders’ perceptions towards the ecosystem services provided by the Natura 2000 sites in the Czech Republic. The data was collected through a questionnaire survey involving 53 stakeholders (forester managers and nature conservation authorities) in all regions of the Czech Republic. The results show that for the respondents, the implementation of the Habitats and Birds Directives in the Czech Republic is very or quite important (54.7%), but at the same time, many respondents consider the Natura 2000 network an obstacle for economic activities close to the sites (66.0% of total respondents). In accordance with the stakeholders’ opinions, the three most important human activities near and inside the Natura 2000 sites are agricultural activities, followed by nature conservation interventions and forestry activities. The representatives of environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and academia emphasize the importance of nature conservation interventions, while the other groups of interest consider the provisioning services supplied by agricultural and forestry activities as the most relevant ecosystem services. The results of this study can be considered as the starting point aimed to improve the participatory process in the establishment and management of the Natura 2000 sites based on the stakeholders’ feelings and opinions.
Lampartová I., Schneider J., Vyskot I., Rajnoch M., Litschmann T.: Impact of protective shelterbelt microclimate characteristics. Ekológia (Bratislava), Vol. 34, No. 2, p. 101-110, 2015.Evaluation of microclimate characteristics of a protective shelterbelt in Obelisk enclosure in 2010. Vegetation performs indispensable functions in the landscape. Protective shelterbelts are important landscape elements. Individual interventions to these ecosystems should be made with the intention to increase the retention capacity of the landscape, the biodiversity, and the stability of individual landscape elements and the landscape as a whole. This article presents the results of the measuring of the effect of model forest vegetation in the proximity of Obelisk in the Lednice-Valtice area on the microclimate. The protective shelterbelt, declared as a forest stand, is located in the cadastral area of Lednice, Podivín and Rakvice. A set of weather stations, supplied by AMETLitschmann and Suchý Velké Bílovice, was used for the measuring. The stations measured wind velocity (m/s), soil temperature in depths of 5 and 10 cm (°C), air temperature (°C), radiation (W.m -2 ) and precipitation (mm) from January 1 to December 31, 2010. The ImageTool application was used to establish optical porosity, based on photos taken in summer and winter. Optical porosity was established as a ratio of white spots to their total number in a specific section of a photograph. The optical porosity was 5% during the growing season and 23% outside the growing season. These values significantly differ from the optimum values for efficient semi-permeable PS, whose porosity is set to 40-50%.
Floodplain forests at the confluence of the rivers Dyje and Morava (in the southeastern tip of the Czech Republic) are completely unique ecosystems in terms of area and ecology. For many years, there has been an effort by the state’s nature protection officials to declare the area as a Protected Landscape Area. This effort is met by the resistance of foresters and other local stakeholders. The study focuses on the identification of stakeholders’ comments and objections to the planned declaration of the Soutok PLA and the comparison between the objections raised and the attitudes of stakeholders from existing PLAs. Using the content analysis of 247 paper documents, the first part of the study determines the negative arguments that are subsequently verified in the second part on the basis of 17 semistructured standardized interviews and interview surveys of 200 respondents. The analysis of the interviews and surveys was based on the grounded theory method. The theoretical sampling and snowball techniques were used to recruit the respondents. The interviews and surveys showed that most concerns over restrictions established by the conservation status are unnecessary since experience showed that they are either not registered or not established by the PLA status, and their application is provided by other legislative standards.
Rising popularity of geocaching is linked to increased risk of negative impacts on natural environment. Based on that, this paper intends to present possible approach of how to evaluate these impacts in the Landscape protected area Moravian Karst (Czech Republic) and in the Vrátna dolina valley (National park Malá Fatra, Slovak Republic). Recreation along with nature conservation has been solved in these areas in the log-run and geocaching has been steadily extending offer of recreational activities. Therefore, it seems desirable to examine how geocaching affects environment and simultaneously how topography or land cover influences availability or difficulty of caches. 57 caches (i.e. one third of the total) has been analyzed in the Moravian Karst and 11 caches in the Vrátna dolina valley. To assess impacts, own classification of indicators has been suggested, such as cache attendance, environment attractiveness or visually detected impacts of geocaching on natural environment. Our study revealed the major risk lies primarily in geo-highways which -with respect to soil type, land cover and intensity of cache attendance -grow rather fast. Despite the local nature of detected impacts, an increased attention shall be devoted to environment care and specifically to regulation of attendance.
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