Defining Natural Landscape Qualities of the Southern Part of the Krka National Park in Croatia

Abstract

The paper is based on a review of the established principles for evaluating the natural qualities of landscapes and developing procedures that can contribute to current methods, upgraded with indicators derived from the perception and attitudes of the public. They were implemented into an integrated model of natural landscape qualities. The method included modeling of the natural landscape qualities for the southern part of the Krka National Park in Croatia. The first evaluation model was based on a survey whose responses were processed and classified using the AHP method and GIS. The results showed that the respondents recognize the diversity of land cover and relief forms and the degree of their fragmentation as the highest natural landscape quality. The second step included overlapping the vulnerability model of natural landscape qualities and the model of perception of natural qualities. It was found that the implementation of perceived natural qualities in the evaluation process affects the model of vulnerability of landscape quality. It also indicates the possibility of implementing the perceived natural qualities of certain landscape types into the complete landscape evaluation process, which encompasses all values in the space, including human perception. Therefore, the whole procedure pointed out the importance of the implementation of perceived values into landscape evaluation, something which is also emphasized by the European Landscape Convention (ELC).

Transformácia historickej krajiny Bošáckej doliny od predindustriálnej do postindustriálnej éry

“…V tomto kontexte považujeme za dôležité upozorniť, že pod pojmom krajina budeme v tomto príspevku rozumieť výlučne kultúrnu krajinu (t. j. ovplyvnenú človekom), keďže niektorí autori (napr. Bogovac et al 2021) považujú prírodnú krajinu (t. j. krajinu bez vplyvu človeka) za plne nahradenú kultúrnou, zatiaľ čo v iní pracujú s pojmom prírodná krajina ako s istou podkategóriou minimálne zmenenej, respektíve revitalizovanej/chránenej kultúrnej krajiny (napr. Špulerová et al 2022).…”