Podrobné vyhledávání v článcích

The thirty years of the Šumava/Bohemian Forest Mts. National Park (NP) have provided many findings – due to natural disturbances. European spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus) outbreaks culminated in 1996–1997 and 2009–2010, leading to a mass Norway spruce (Picea abies) decline in 1997 and 2011. But the European spruce bark beetle has left its traces until today, although to a lesser extent, just like a range of hurricanes. The result is that a quarter of the NP’s non-intervention area (approx. 18,000 hectares until 2019) is formed by stands with dead trees. Non-forest areas and peat-bogs account for about 22% and variously old stands dominated by spruce for the remaining 53%. The world of large spruce temples with tall column trunks has changed rapidly in a part of the territory.

Mineral mining has had a long tradition as an important national economy sector in the Czech Republic. Sites disturbed by mining have become an integral part of the landscape in many regions. The most altered sites include quarries, dumps and heaps, sand- and gravel pits, kaolin mining sites, and slag and fly ash tailing ponds. The traditional negative view of sites affected this way has rapidly been changingamong experts. Early successional (development) stages and diverse habitats with extreme conditions and low productivity, common at such sites, often serve as substitute habitats for many species disappearing from the landscape in the Czech Republic. Several studies demonstrating the considerable conservation potential of these sites come from the Czech Republic.

It would not be far from the truth to say that in summer 2021 the Jizerské hory/Jizera Mountains Beech Forest National Nature Reserve (NNR) became the most often mentioned Specially Protected Area in mass media in the Czech Republic. In July 2021, the NNR was inscribed on the prestigious UNESCO World Heritage List becoming a new component of the serial World Heritage Site Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe (Plesník & Hušek 2021). Because in previous articles we have provided only a brief description of the NNR and have paid attention more to its nomination and approval (Plesník & Hušek 2020, Plesník 2020) it is quite appropriate to present the extraordinary site not only from a point of view of nature and landscape heritage protection, conservation and management in more detail.

Dear friends, dear readers,

You have got another issue of Ochrana přírody/Nature Conservation Journal presenting the selected articles published there in 2021 describing approaches of nature conservation in the Czech Republic, in both national and international contexts.

One of the significant preconditions for enhancing and improving nature conservation, biodiversity protection respectively in protected areas is ecotourism development, undoubtedly strengthening job opportunity/employment and economic prosperity in the countryside and at the same time also local community involvement in nature conservation (Eagles et al. 2002).

National parks are large, specially protected areas. They aim to protect natural ecosystems, support undisturbed natural processes, as well as human-determined biodiversity. However,  as the national park mission, in addition to the above mentioned, also includes enabling sustainable development, national park management authorities urgently need to ensure long-term monitoring of the fulfilling both the conservation goals and the mission. A transboundary project of the administrations of the Šumava/Bavarian Forest Mts. has mainly addressed the latter point.

Data show that, in the 1990s, 28.4% of the total length of the Czech Republic’s watercourses were unfavourably modified, which is tens of thousands of kilometres of the river network. According to the current National Biodiversity Strategy of the Czech Republic, the country’s current optimistic targets are at least 300 km of restored watercourses for the 2016–2025 period. The status of watercourses and related floodplains has therefore not seen any significant improvement since the 1990s. Compared with biological and physical/chemical quality elements, monitoring and enhancement of the morphological status of the country’s watercourses has enjoyed a less significant position in the long term. However, apart from the “aesthetical” point of view, its improvement is also of unquestionable importance in terms of water retention in the landscape, flood protection, and drought management. It is therefore a topical issue in society.

Particularly in farmland, there are consequences of erosion and soil transportation into watercourses and further to fishponds and water reservoirs. How to correctly assess the current state of a river basin/catchment areas and of a reservoir and to identify the sources of pollution? Therefore, for proposing appropriate conservation measures both in the landscape and directly on watercourses, mathematical modelling can be successfully combined with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing and photogrammetry.
When surveying a site, archive data of aerial photography it is a good resource, and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or drones are useful, both for making overview images and for photogrammetric processing of a ortophotomaps, or of a detailed surface model

In the Czech Republic, Specially Protected Area1 management has been one of the most important tasks of the State Nature Conservancy since the 1990s. Due to improving the knowledge of species and natural habitat distribution and their development as well as increasing uncertainty caused by incomplete knowledge of impacts resulted from extensive anthropogenic land-use changes and current and predicted climate change, a traditional long-term planned blueprint management has been untenable. Therefore, the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic (NCA CR) decided to apply in practice adaptive management (AM) and to introduce necessary information and economic tools for its implementation.