Problems of agriculture and landscape management as perceived by farmers of the Šumava Mountains (Czech Republic)

Exploring farmer's knowledge as a source of information on past and present cultural landscapes

“…It has proved especially valuable in regard to local inhabitants' knowledge of local soils, their potential and their management (Di Mauro, 2003;Cools et al, 2003;Grossman, 2003;Desbiez et al, 2004;Alexander and Kidd, 2000;Ali, 2003) and in relation to local vegetation and its use and management (Lykke, 2000;Kappelle et al, 2000;Dhillion and Gustad, 2004;Mc Donnald et al, 2003). Also interviews began to be employed in landscape studies investigating the relationships between the landscape and the people (O'Rourke, 2005;Kruger, 2005), landscape management (Cudlínová et al, 1999;Pavlikakis and Tsihrintzis, 2006) and changes in landscapes (Primdahl, 1999;Ellis et al, 2000;Bender et al, 2004;Iiyama et al, 2005;Nikodemus et al, 2005).…”

“…The main aspects of interviewing include the selection of informants, the sample size, the format of interview or questionnaire employed (Davis and Wagner, 2003), and the use of other sources to corroborate the informants' reports (Robertson and Mc Gee, 2003). As regards to the format of the interview, most of the studies reviewed appear to have used semi-structured interviews (Lykke, 2000;Zurayk et al, 2001;Nyeko et al, 2002;Peroni and Hanazaki, 2002;Di Mauro, 2003;Grossman, 2003;Mc Donnald et al, 2003;Desbiez et al, 2004;O'Rourke, 2005), because the results are easier to process than those from unstructured interviews, employed in other studies (Cudlínová et al, 1999;Mendez et al, 2001;Robertson and Mc Gee, 2003). This is particularly important when informants' reports are compared to information from other sources (historic archives, aerial photographs, inventories, etc.)…”

Reformulating the social–ecological system in a cultural rural mountain landscape in the Picos de Europa region (northern Spain)

“…bureaucratic distance, the less appropriate they appear to be for the needs of the interested parties and less accessible for their participation. Cudlínova et al (1999) attribute this problem to the different views of the target groups of the policies; the local population, and the managers and decision-takers; environmental authorities and the Administration. They believe that the failure of the current environmental policy, based upon subsidies to the local population, lies in the Administration's ignorance of the social factor and they conclude that the landscape cannot be managed from the outside.…”

The Impact of Farming and Land Ownership on Soil Erosion

“…The implementation of anti-erosion crop rotations is diffi cult in practical terms and almost does not apply in large-scale farming as it is not in their economic interest. However, the importance of anti-erosion crop rotations is unquestionable in terms of both soil and biodiversity protection, as well as in terms of landscape-formation (Cudlinová et al, 1999). Kvítek et al (1997) and Vašinová et al (2012) agree that the most important factors aff ecting the amount of water fl owing out of basin are:…”