Priority landscapes in Brudzeń Landscape Park conservation plan

Abstract

The implementation of the European Landscape Convention in Poland requires the identification and landscape assessment in the form of a landscape audit made for each region (voivodeship), as enshrined in the Act on Spatial Planning and Land Development. The Act assumes that as part of landscape audit within regional parks priority landscapes as well as zones of landscape protection will be indicated. There are methodical tools prepared by the Ministry of the Environment to realize both main landscape audit elements – the instruction and the recommendations. Currently (at the end of 2018) no region of the audit is yet to be found, and the newly adopted conservation plans for regional parks enforce, in accordance with the Nature Conservation Act reference to both priority landscapes and zones. This article presents testing of the methodology proposed by the Ministry of the Environment for determining priority landscapes (the instruction) and landscape protection zones (the recommendations). The reference field was the conservation plan for Brudzeń Landscape Park (BLP) located in the Masovian Voivodeship. An attempt to implement particularly the Instructions and identify priority landscapes in the BLP conservation plan proved to be not fully possible. The analyzes carried out in the BLP call for the opinion that apart from the current landscape, it is necessary to take into account other than land use features of the environment that determine the specificity of the landscape – mainly terrain, additionally the catalog of current types of landscapes should be open. Tools prepared by the Ministry of the Environment – still need to be refined.

Relief as an important factor in determining priority landscapes: a case study on Polish landscape parks

“…Based on the land cover only, it is not possible to take into account the valley slopes. To Cieszewska et al 2018) provide a more accurate presentation of entire valleys, it was necessary to combine the forms of land cover/use in a way that emphasises the presence of the valley (wide valleys with short slopes) ( Figure 2). The delimitation of long slopes of wide river valleys and narrow valleys with short slopes made it possible to emphasise the borders of glacial uplands, which are a crucial physiognomic element influencing the attractiveness of the landscape.…”

“…In the Polish Regulation on Landscape Audits, relief is an essential element, but the key division of landscapes into Cieszewska et al 2018). (Abbreviations explained in Table 1.…”

“…In order to show the results of the different ways in which relief is included in the landscape classification, a comparison was made between two approaches: the first based on the Principles of Landscape Audit according to the Regulation, and the second based on the authors' method of identifying current and priority landscapes (Cieszewska et al 2018).…”

“…All three landscape parks are dominated by similar forms of land cover, such as forest, arable land and rural built-up areas. For each park, a set of two maps showing the division of landscape parks was compiled: (1) set out in accordance with the Regulation of 2019, and (2) using the method developed by the authors for the purposes of protection plans for these parks (Cieszewska et al 2018). The basis for the studies was the local scale (1:10 000).…”

“…The compilation shows how different the types of landscape may be in terms of land relief and land cover when applied to practical studies. In the case of the author's method, the difference results from the morphometric and morphogenetic variability of land relief and land cover (Cieszewska et al 2018). In the case of classification under the provisions of the Regulation of 2019, the land cover was considered as the landscape background and the relief characteristics act only as a supplement to the generalised landforms.…”