The land use mix (LUM) is among the critical issues in spatial planning because it can determine the occurrence and structure of various land use and cover types (LUC) and prevent any adverse patterns. The paper focuses on the LUM in functional urban areas (FUAs) in Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary. The research employed Urban Atlas (UA) data on LUC in 2006 and 2012 to characterise LUM in the FUAs. The research follows the division of the FUA into the urban area (urban core, UC) and its functional surroundings (commuting zones, CZ). We further characterised the phenomena investigated for the entire country, region, and Europe using Corine Land Cover (CLC) data. The LUM was quantified with the entropy index (EI), dissimilarity index (DI), and multi-dimensional balance index (MBI). The EI demonstrated that the investigated FUAs went through more substantial LUM changes than the 27 European Union member states (EU27) from 2006 to 2012. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that LUM overspill was more intensive in CZs than in UCs on the regional and national levels. We found out that urbanised areas grew at the expense of agricultural areas in both UCs and CZs with similar dynamics in 2006–2012 in all the analysed countries.

The dynamics of the cultural landscape is associated with the penetration of people into the natural landscape, the settling and adaptation to the needs of the society and its development. Climate creates the decisive influence, specifically the form of extremely high rainfall causing flooding. Adverse impact on the cultural agricultural landscape is mainly the submersion time. This time depends on the configuration of the terrain, its disposition and the existing drainage ditches in the area, ensuring the drainage of the flood to the recipients. Long-lasting floods have stipulated taking measures for the protection of the area from flooding by building dikes and drainage of the flood from the area. Identifying the extent of extreme floods and zones of permanent waterlogging is currently provided by modern technology which allows recording satellite images in different spectral bands. Within the basic distinguishing signs mainly accruing is used and it is possible to track changes of the extent of flooded areas and thus identify problem areas insufficiently protected against long-term flooding. Consequently, it is possible to solve the concept of exploiting such areas to keep them in the structure of PPF or their reclassification in wetland systems with necessary legislative security. The aim of this paper is to show the possibility of using satellite images in identifying the extent of flooding.

Drought is generally associated with the persistence of low precipitation amount, decreased soil moisture and water availability relative to the normal levels in a designated area. The effects of drought, range from the morphological to molecular levels, and are evident at all phenological stages of the plant growth, at whatever stage the water deficit occurs. Determination of the surface water demands for irrigation purposes comes out from the assumption of hydrologic processes stationarity. This paper shows our research prerequisite that water stress participates in an important part on the volume changes of over ground parts, which is predictive for the irrigation demand. Malus domestica var. Yellow Transparent was chosen for the measurement of volume changes of the surface plant parts. Our measurements were realised by the Diameter dendrometer small (DD-S) from 24.08. to 13.09.2017. One tree was irrigated by the dose of 50 mm. We compared the dendrometric changes to soil moisture and rainfall on both irrigated and non-irrigated trees. The experiment showed the differences between the irrigated apple tree (the diameters of the branches fluctuated between 11.9 and 12.1 mm) and the non-irrigated apple tree (the diameter of the branches increased after three-day rain from 8.35 to 8.61 mm), in order to determine the water stress of plants based on dendrometric changes and optimize irrigation during the drought period.

According to Directive (EU) 2019/904 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 June 2019, singleuse plastic cutlery, cotton buds, straws and stirrers will be banned in the member states of EU from summer 2021 onwards. Many of them are being replaced by compostable products. The aim of the research was to assess the biological disintegration of selected single-use products under real conditions of urban composting facility. All tested products are established for the Slovak market as 100% compostable by a composting facility. The eight selected products from five different producers were placed into a composting pile of the urban composting facility for 12 weeks. The samples were visually inspected on a regular basis. Temperature and humidity of the pile were continuously measured at the same time. Three samples from each kind of tested product were analyzed, 3 pieces of filter paper were used as the reference samples. The research showed that all tested products were completely or partially disintegrated during the considered period. The average degree of the disintegration of 90% was not reached for one producer only.

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