The removal of dams and reservoirs may seem to be an unforeseen and sometimes controversial step in water management. The removal of barriers may be different for each country or region, as each differs greatly in terms of politics, economy and social and cultural awareness. This paper addresses the complex problem of removing dams on rivers and their connected reservoirs. We demonstrate the scales of the changes, including their major ecological, economic, and social impacts. Arguments and approaches to this problem vary across states and regions, depending on the political system, economy and culture, as confirmed by the qualitative and quantitative intensities of the dam removal process and its global geographical variation. The results indicate that the removal of dams on rivers and their connected reservoirs applies predominantly to smaller structures (< 2.5 m). The existing examples provide an important conclusion that dams and reservoirs should be considered with regard to the interrelations between people and the environment. Decisions to deconstruct hydraulic engineering structures (or, likewise, to construct them) have to be applied with scrutiny. Furthermore, all decision-making processes have to be consistent and unified and thus developed to improve the lack of strategies currently implemented across world.

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The potential for using a standardized landscape evaluation method for planning a greenway in a young glacial area in northern Poland is evaluated in this paper.

This paper presents the results of research on the history of the protection of mills as objects of cultural heritage on Polish lands. First, the spatial distribution of over 20,000 mills at the beginning of the previous century is characterized, then the main actions undertaken for their protection in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are discussed. Merely 3.4% of mills that worked in the past are now protected as monuments and recorded in the national register. Most of them remain in their original locations (in situ), and another 71 windmills and 22 watermills have been relocated to open-air museums. These specific institutions face a particularly important task involving the necessity to retain the original functionality of the mills.

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