The Silesian Upland is one of the most degraded areas in Poland owing to the long-lasting influence of mining and metallurgy. Mining influences every component of the environment in significant and diverse ways. But even in such a devastated terrain there is evidence of the proper management of post-mining areas and natural self-restoration, which paradoxically, owing to mining, appear in the most intensively used economic areas. Figure 1. Influence of rock mass loss, connected with underground mining of black coal, on the natural environment (based on Pelka-Go&ciniak and Waga, 2003).
The article discusses the phenomenon of urban abandonment as a result of environmental hazards. Seen as an outcome of environmental drivers, the underlying assumption is that a characteristic of environmental hazards is their spatial and temporal constancy of impact, whereby processes and phenomena having taken place in the past have their analogies in the present. In order to generate insights for future research and policy development, there is a need to pay greater attention to the precarious relationship between humans and the natural environment, not least by drawing lessons from the past through the study of historical cases. The article clarifies the dynamic interactions of drivers and their progression through various stages of urban abandonment. This is done by recourse to an analysis of some general trends and an in‐depth examination of three selected case studies from Poland. It has two objectives. The first is to identify the historical role of environmental drivers in the process of urban abandonment, while the second one is to contribute to the typology of environmentally related processes of urban abandonment in order to better identify future calamities. With respect to the former, the findings reveal that the relation between environmental hazards and urban abandonment is pertinent in regions with specific geographic conditions and pertains only to certain categories of urban settlements. With respect to the latter, by drawing on these findings, we propose some alterations and amendments to McLeman's comprehensive model of settlement abandonment in the context of global environmental change.
Starczynów "Desert" is located in the eastern part of the Silesian Upland (southern Poland) and makes a compact area with the occurrence of aeolian sands, which till the 1960s. were intensively blown. Its flat surface is diversified by many dunes of different shapes and sizes. Aeolian coversands are formed here as a cover of changing thickness. The "desert" is not a typical dry climatic area. The term Starczynów "Desert" refers to the area of occurrence of bare sands and aeolian processes and makes a geographical name that can be found on topographic maps. Its development was conditioned by human activity, where since the Middle Ages dense forest areas have been cut to obtain timber for the needs of contemporary mining and metallurgy of lead and silver ores causing the activation of aeolian processes at sandy substratum, built from the Vistulian proluvial-deluvial deposits. In the formation of the aeolian relief of Starczynów "Desert" it is possible to distinguish some stages of intensive wind activity: the 13 th -15 th centuries, the 16 th -17 th centuries, the turn of 18 th and 19 th centuries, the turn of 20 th and 21st centuries. In present times human interference in the environment of Starczynów "Desert" consists of fixing sandy areas to protect them from deflation. Human damage exists here in the aeolian relief through terrain levelling and building fire escape roads. In the north-eastern part of the "desert" sand was exploited, therefore a sandpit appeared. This area was subject to the activity of mining for Zn-Pb ores, which caused numerous collapsed cones. In the last few years this part of the "desert" was properly reclaimed.
The geological structure and the occurrence of mineral resources in the Silesian Upland in a significant way influenced the development of industry and caused transformation of every landscape element, among others changes in relief and therefore the formation of anthropogenic landforms. The paper focuses on environmental aspects of relief transformation in the Silesian Upland. The author described aesthetic, geomorphological, hydrological, climatological, pedological and biological aspects on the base of representatives of two groups of landforms–consciously created by human being and being an unintentional effect of human activity (of secondary character). All analysed landforms are new elements in relief, in majority of cases being in disharmony with their neighbourhood. They are alien to the landscape and disturb the equilibrium in the nature. It was proved that they strongly influence water and climatological conditions and soil cover. But sometimes the anthropogenic landforms can be perceived as advantageous for the nature, especially in case of subsidence depressions because of development of aquatic and hydrophilous species and in case of spoil tips due to spontaneous development of vegetation cover. The nature easily adapts to new environmental conditions (process of natural succession and independent introduction of species for new habitats). In these terrains the increase in biodiversity was observed.
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