The industrialization after the Second World War was associated with people moving from the countryside to towns and with fundamental demographic changes, especially shrinking and aging of the farming population and a resulting shortage of agricultural labor. Combined with the loss of markets for crops as a result of political changes after the Second World War, the lack of irrigation equipment, and poor road access to the land, recent decades have seen the abandonment of a significant number of traditional terraces in the Mediterranean area. Many of them have become afforested, and lack of maintenance has led to erosion. Their partial revitalization took place only in the last decade and can be ascribed to suburbanization, strengthening of the market economy and resulting increased demand, better road access to the land for farm machinery achieved through subsidies from the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after Slovenian joined the union in 2004, and successful promotion of domestically produced food. The fate of the modern terraces in the sub-Pannonian landscapes has been completely different. Fundamental changes also occurred there after Slovenia gained independence in 1991. The introduction of a market economy was accompanied by the collapse of the communist agricultural collectives that had managed the vineyards and orchards. Companies emerged from them that continued to employ workers from the former collectives, and some of the land was taken over by private grape and fruit growers. Although the beauty of the terraced landscape started establishing it as a tourism destination, and its highest-quality areas were also protected as landscape parks, some vineyard owners have started using excavators to destroy the terraces and plant the grapevines vertically in a desire to increase yields. This is resulting in the loss of its distinctive landscape identity.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 37600005In the majority of western EU countries, today natural landscapes can only be found in protected areas, whereby in some places the most polluted areas are protected as nature reserves. People have the power to actively affect changes. The question is what their responsibility is in this context and whether they are willing to accept and address it. Landscape transformation is characterized by numerous changes. This presentation highlights landscape dynamics and compares various types of constructed landscapes, among which terraced landscapes play a special role.
B.04 Guest lecture
For a large number of people living in hilly regions of Slovenia cultural terraces are important landscape elements. The contribution presents links between landslide susceptibility in terraced areas in Slovenia. The position of landslide areas is strongly influenced by the topography and thus indirectly by the construction of cultural terraces. They trigger during and after terraces construction when the drainage system is altered. Thus, agricultural activity leads to instability of slopes, and increases the production costs. Links between landsliding and cultural terraces were determined using the geographic information systems.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
Acta geographica Slovenica is the main Slovenian geographical scientific journal published by the Anton Melik Geographical Institute of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Each year, it is distributed in excange for 200 scientific journals from around the world. The articles on the internet are read in more than 100 countries.
C.05 Editorial board of a national magazine
The dissertation presents examples of various landscape regionalizations and typifications, and examines accessible digital data layers and geographic information tools that can be used to design a specific classification and evaluate the results obtained. In addition, the data layers covering the territory of Slovenia were also evaluated in terms of their applicability to determine natural landscape types.
D.09 Tutoring for postgraduate students
COBISS.SI-ID: 269728256