Blaž Komac

Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts | ZRC SAZU · Anton Melik Geographical Institute

IZVLEČEK Veliki gozdni požari v Sloveniji V članku predstavljamo temeljne značilnosti velikih požarov v naravi v Sloveniji. V uvodu obravnavamo njihovo pogostost in geografsko razširjenost na svetovni in evropski ravni, ki je največja na evropskem jugu in prav tako na slovenskem jugu. V nadaljevanju opisujemo značilnosti velikih požarov, imenovani...

The book Preteklost in prihodnost ('The past and the future') is the sixteenth volume in the GIS v Sloveniji (GIS in Slovenia) book series and commemorates its 30th anniversary. The goal of the volume is to present the wide variety of research findings on geographical information systems in Slovenia in recent years. Powerful geoinformatic tools and...

The Soča River is an important water source, and its water potential was used early for transport and energy production, in the last century especially for electricity. For this reason, the Soča Valley is (was) a permanent »testing ground« for large hydropower plans. Several hydropower plants were built in its middle and lower reaches, generating o...

The chapter discusses the effects of Climate Change on risk of natural hazards, damage and investments.

ENGLISH: In this article we analyze the contribution of public funds for prevention, scientific research, financial aid for disaster events, and insurance in the field of natural disasters in Slovenia. It presents the public funds for prevention, response and recovery. We have analyzed the investments in the protection and rescue system and the bud...

The Barrier Index is presented in this contribution. The index shows the extent to which spatial units of different sizes are closed off by barriers, influencing society by the different "thickness" and "thinness" of boundaries. The article defines the Index and compares land units with barriers in various details. The calculations were made for sp...

Pripravljeni smo bili na drugačno prihodnost - razprava o tem, v čem so vremensko pogojene naravne nesreče drugačne Dogodki zadnjega leta so spremenili tudi naše dojemanje naravnih nesreč. Te niso samo viharji, orkani in potresi, ki prizadenejo oddaljene pokrajine in zaradi njih trpijo manj razvite države. Slabo jo odnesejo tudi razvite države, ko...

V članku predstavljamo podatke o škodi zaradi naravnih nesreč v Sloveniji in Evropi po podatkih Sendajskega monitoringa ter pozavarovalnice Swiss Re. Razpravljamo tudi o položaju Slovenije glede na svetovni indeks ogroženosti in indeks obvladovanja tveganj ter obravnavamo podatke Evropskega solidarnostnega sklada. Predstavimo tudi naložbe v področj...

The paper aims to provide an overview of the most important parameters (the occurrence, frequency and magnitude) in Vojvodina Region (North Serbia). Monthly and annual mean precipitation values in the period 1946–2014, for the 12 selected meteorological stations were used. Relevant parameters(precipitation amounts, Angot precipitation index) were u...

The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical and conceptual introduction for the special issue on the interactions between food and territory manifested in gastronomy tourism. We focus on four perspectives: sustainability, the role of heritage, the potential for rural development and the networking of stakeholders. The contributions critically...

Snežni plazovi v dolini Soče 22. in 23. januarja 2021 ELABORAT-POROČILO O RAZISKAVAH AVTORJI: dr. Blaž KOMAC, mag. Miha PAVŠEK, dr. Manca VOLK BAHUN, Jure TIČAR KAZALO 1 SNEŽNI PLAZOVI JANUARJA 2021 1.1 Uvod 1.2 Kratka kronologija dogodkov 1.3 Vzroki in značilnosti plazenja 1.4 Modeliranje snežnih plazov 1.5 Zajezitev vodotokov 2 SNEŽNI PLAZOVI V Z...

REPORT ON RESEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 AVALANCHES IN JANUARY 2021 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Short chronology of events 1.3 Causes and characteristics of the avalanches 1.4 Avalanche modeling 1.5 River dams caused by the avalanches 2 Avalanches in the Soča River Valley, causes and characteristics 3 Discussion and Conclusion - the necessity to amend...

The retreat of ice shelves and glaciers over the last century provides unequivocal evidence of recent global warming. Glacierets (miniature glaciers) and ice patches are important components of the cryosphere that highlight the global retreat of glaciers, but knowledge of their behaviour prior to the Little Ice Age is lacking. Here, we report the u...

Atlas on Quality of Life in Slovenia analyses quality of life through dimensions, domains, and subdomains as defined in the ESPON QoL–Quality of Life Measurements and Methodology project. To do this, we first collected appropriate indicators and data for all the Slovenian territorial levels (national, NUTS 2 or cohesion regions, NUTS 3 or statistic...

Various ice bodies are an important source of paleoenvironmental data, and their study improves the understanding of present and future environmental conditions. Their changes are an important indicator of climate change. This special issue of Acta geographica Slovenica draws attention to the changing and disappearing cryosphere across the globe, w...

The Triglav Glacier in the Julian Alps and the Skuta Glacier in the Kamnik-Savinja Alps are among the south-easternmost glaciers in the Alps. Historical data show that ice masses are undergoing mass loss as the overall climate warms. Glacier ice and cave ice contain a wealth of paleoclimatic information, and rapid sampling is needed if any such inf...

Acta geographica Slovenica is a scientific journal for papers covering all fields of geography and relateddisciplines. It is issued by the ZRC SAZU Anton Melik Geographical Institute, published by Založba ZRC,and co-published by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. From 1952 to 1976, the journal was published periodically, then once a year,...

Članek prinaša pregled glavnih tipov, temeljnih lastnosti in učinkov negradbenih protipoplavnih ukrepov. Ugotavljajmo, da uporaba negradbenih ukrepov izhaja iz geografskih raziskav in da so v zadnjih desetletjih vse pomembnejši tudi v drugih strokah, ki se ukvarjajo s poplavami. Izkazalo se je namreč, da samo gradbeni protipoplavni ukrepi ne zadošč...

While the COVID-19 crisis is continuing to impact Europe, consuming a majority of attention and resources, other disaster risks still remain. For an increasing area of Europe, weather conditions are contributing to a dangerous wildfire season, exacerbated by a changing risk landscape. The European Science and Technology Group (E-STAG) thematic pape...

Most of the damage from wildfires is due to extreme events that represent less than 2 per cent of the total number of fires. These events, for which neither ecosystems nor communities are adapted , can have significant socioeconomic and ecological consequences. This is why it is now time to develop appropriate risk reduction strategies and minimize...

One of the methods of water resource management is to construct small retention ponds. Within the framework of the “Possible ecological control of flood hazard in the hilly regions of Hungary and Slovenia“ project the management of small ponds and their impact on flood prevention were studied in selected catchments. Data on pond management were gat...

Abstract. The retreat of ice shelves and glaciers over the last century provides unequivocal evidence of recent global warming. Glacierets (miniature glaciers) are an important component that highlights the global retreat of glaciers, but knowledge of their behaviour prior to the Little Ice Age is lacking. Here, we present subglacial carbonate depo...

Slovenia has very heterogeneous landforms because it lies at the intersection of the Alps, Dinaric Alps, Pannonian Basin, and Adriatic Sea Basin, all characterized by unique geology, tectonics, and geomorphic processes. Four major geomorphic landscape types can be defined based on their genesis. More than half of Slovenian territory has fluvial cha...

The diverse physical geographical characteristics of Slovenia result in diverse soil types. Due to widespread karst landscapes, the basic division of soils is carbonate and non-carbonate. However, the pedogeographical classification of Slovenian soils is based on topography and has three groups of soil types: soils of plains and valleys, soils of h...

Almost all types of natural hazards that are typical for Europe also occur in Slovenia, with the exception of some major events such as volcanic eruptions or ocean-related natural hazards such as large tsunamis. The greatest economic damage is caused by natural hazards affecting agriculture, such as drought, hail, rainstorms, and frosts. Great dama...

There are three main types of climate in Slovenia: a temperate humid climate with hot summers, a temperate continental climate, and a mountain climate, each of them with several subtypes. The average annual temperature is highest along the coast, where it exceeds 12 °C. In central Slovenia these values are between 8 and 10 °C, falling below freezin...

Slovenia is characterized by an abundance of water in a great variety of forms. The river network comprises almost 28,000 km of watercourses (1.4 km/km²). However, these are not equally distributed because about 40% of Slovenia is karst and therefore almost without surface waters. Rivers from four–fifths of Slovenian territory flow several hundred...

Potreba po ločitvi med zemljišči in zagotavljanju varnosti se je pojavila zgodaj v zgodovini. Ograje kot rezultat tega procesa predstavljajo del arhitekturne in pokrajinske podobe podeželskega in urbanega prostora. S spreminjanjem pojmovanja varnosti so se spreminjali tudi oblika, material in funkcija ograj. Vsa ta različnost se odseva v podobi pro...

This article presents a quantitative analysis of fictional maps and their relation to historic maps from different periods. Fictional maps are maps of imaginary territories. This type of map is now common in fiction, but they arose relatively late, in the second half of the nineteenth century, and are considered an independent branch of cartography...

In order to assess the rainfall erosivity in the Pannonian basin, several parameters which describe distribution, concentration and variability of precipitation were used, as well as 9 extreme precipitation indices. The precipitation data is obtained from the European Climate Assessment and Dataset project for the period 1961-2014, for 8 meteorolog...

We analysed spatial development of traditional and modern settlements on active alluvial fans in the Upper Sava Valley (NW Slovenia), by using old cadastral data from the beginning of the 19th century, time series of aerial photographs from the middle of the 20th century and recent building cadastre. The valley is surrounded by the mountainous Juli...

The poster presents impact of global warming on a karst spring in W Slovenia by presenting the 50-year analyses of water temperature and regional analyses of discharge trends in the nearby Soča River.

The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical and conceptual introduction for the Special Issue on the role of green creative environments in sustainable urban and regional development. The idea is based on the assumption that concepts of creativity mostly address economic issues and to a lesser extent social issues, while green concepts predom...

Cave ice samples collected within karstic terrain have major ion and nutrient concentrations showing that the ice originates from local precipitation modified by the addition of Ca 2+ and HCO 3 − from the dissolution of the local bedrock. Isotopic profiles of Paradana Cave ice are similar to those described in other ice caves in central and eastern...

This paper presents a combination of architectural and geographical methods for studying the abandonment of Alpine cultural landscapes. It examines the afforestation of hay meadows above the Uskovnica Pasture in the Bohinj Mountains in Slovenia's Julian Alps. Written sources on the intensity of changes are rare for mountainous areas, and so auxilia...

Land registers, or cadasters, contain information on land use because this is vital for land assessment and taxation. Some European countries produced land registers covering their entire territories as early as the nineteenth century. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Habsburg Monarchy produced the Franciscean Cadaster, also known a...

The annual trends of surface mean monthly air temperature and monthly extreme temperatures were analyzed from ten meteorological stations in Kosovo. The data refer to observation periods between 1949 and 1999 for four stations, and observation periods between 1965 and 1999 for the remaining six stations. Trends were analyzed for nine time series. P...

Agriculture plays an important role in both protecting and developing farmland. In Slovenia, the main reasons for this loss are urbanization and the implementation of large development projects that require the destruction of fertile farmland. About 3000 ha of farmland has been lost each year since Slovenia’s independence. The importance of agricul...

This article explores the walled yards in the Bovec area. These yards were created on the edges of the town, where the urban structure transitions into a rural one. They are characterized by high stone walls typical of the Mediterranean cultural environments. Their origins are connected with clearing agricultural land to semi-permanently delimit pa...

The city of Ljubljana lies at the intersection of various geomorphological regions that have strongly influenced its spatial organization. Prehistoric settlements were built on marshland, a Roman town was built on the first river terrace of the Ljubljanica River, and in the Middle Ages a town was built in a strategic position between the Lju-bljani...

Over the past decades, attractive terraced landscapes composed of cultivated terraces have been increasingly dealt with in studies in geography, landscape architecture, ethnology, rural sociology, agronomy, pedology, and other spatial disciplines. Around 2000, several important research projects were carried out. The Terraced Landscapes Alliance (I...

Geographical names are proper names of geographical features. They are characterized by different meanings, contexts, and history. Local names of geographical features (endonyms) may differ from the foreign names (exonyms) for the same feature. If a specific geographical name has been codified or in any other way established by an authority of the...

V knjigi je sedemnajst poglavij s področja naravnih nesreč. V poglavjih so opisana raziskovalna spoznanja ter primeri uporabe sodobnih tehnologij v primeru naravnih nesreč, s poudarkom na naravnih nesrečah v urbanem okolju. Knjiga vsebuje različne teme, kot so na primer potresi, poplave, snežni in zemeljski plazovi, vročinski valovi, mestni toplotn...

A recent forest fire in the Republic of Serbia is discussed concerning classification, legislative framework and fire management, giving a detailed analysis of the forest fire occurrence. Analysing past and predicting future fires are crucial for policy development and forest management practices to prevent and mitigate fires. Fire hazard is discus...

Triglav National Park is the only national park (NP) in Slovenia. Its protection measures have always been publicly disputed and its impact questioned. This paper identifies and assesses the impact of the park on regional development. It compares two kinds of data: the municipal development coefficient based on statistical data and residents’ attit...

Ujma is a professional journal devoted to the issues of natural and other disasters. It has been published since 1987 by the Administration for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief. The journal is published annually, with the exception of the years 2001 and 2003 when double issues came out. This year marks the publication of issue no. 30, and the a...

V clanku predstavljamo hidro-geomorfne procese, ki so povezani z naravnimi in umetnimi pregradami. Ob zajezitvah, ki nastajajo za pregradami, prihaja zaradi razlicnih vzrokov, kot je nihanje vodne gladine, do proženja zemeljskih plazov in skalnih podorov. Taksni pojavi lahko povzrocijo prelitje ali podrtje naravnih pa tudi umetnih pregrad. V tem oz...

Many countries around the world are facing increasing impacts of natural disasters. This is primarily attributed to climate change, accompanied by an increase in the intensity of meteorological and hydro-geomorphological natural hazards. However, is climate change really responsible for this increased damage and low resilience, or should the cause...

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Bojan Erhartic had a strong impact on Slovenian geography because he placed it on the map of countries where geographers deal with geomorphological heritage. He began his research path into the world of natural heritage with the study of geography. After receiving his bachelor's degree, he turned his at...

Choosing appropriate measurement sites for further investigation is one of the crucial points in determining the UHI intensity. To obtain comparable values among different cities we should use measurements obtained in similar circumstances. In the context of the deployment of an urban climate network, this guideline contains recommendations for met...

Ljubljana made the first climate mapping of the city in 2000, putting the differences in terms of UHI effects between the inner part of the city and the surrounding areas are quite evident. An efficient planning of city infrastructure takes into account increasing average temperatures in a city, and therefore provides solution to reduce and monitor...

This article presents the diversity of Slovenian terraced landscapes which is illustrated mainly at the level of Slovenian landscape types, focusing on a comparison of terraced landscapes in selected pilot settlements. In addition to basic GIS analyses based on LIDAR data, the diversity of metric parameters of characteristic terraced areas are also...

V clanku predstavljamo enega od možnih metodoloskih pristopov k izdelavi zemljevidov verjetnosti za nastanek obpotresnih zemeljskih plazov in skalnih podorov v Sloveniji v velikem merilu, na ravni regij ali države. Možnost njihovega nastanka smo ocenili z Newmarkovo metodo, ki obsega oceno plazovitosti z uporabo faktorja stabilnosti in kriticnega p...

Geomorphological research on glacial features in Slovenia has a long tradition; the first studies were published in the late nineteenth century by Brückner. Evidence of glacial erosion and deposition is preserved in the Slovenian Alps and on the highest plateaus of the Dinaric Mountains, including traces of ice fields and ice caps with outlet glaci...

Leta 1924 je bilo v Dolini Triglavskih jezer vzpostavljeno zavarovano območje. Danes je del srednjega dela obsežnejšega Triglavskega narodnegaparka. Dolini daje jo poseben pečat jezera, izstopa pa tudi po drugih naravnih posebnostih. V okviru nežive narave so predstavljene nekatere njene geološke, reliefne in vodne značilnosti, v okviru žive narave...

In order to improve the understanding of the concepts featured in this special issue of Acta geographica Slovenica, this review article presents the Alps as a geographical concept, the Alpine Convention, and the Alpine Space transnational cooperation program. All three categories have a different spatial scope and thus must be clearly defined and d...

This special issue of Acta geographica Slovenica discusses selected topics in spatial development in the Alps from the perspective of spatial planning legislation, stakeholder engagement in spatial planning decisions, tools that enable the effective flow of expertise and exchange of instruments, and best practices across the Alps, as well as from t...

The article gives an overview of Rudolf Badjura's work in the broader area of geography. His guidebooks in particular are well known, as is, to a lesser extent, his book Terenska geografija (Field Geography), a collection of numerous geographical terms which is also important from a geonomastic perspective. In addition, he produced a significant vo...

The concept of resilience has recently been gaining ground as a tool for understanding the landscape. Although it was already used in antiquity, the concept in its modern sense derives from physics, where it designates a characteristic of the material that is returned to its original position after a fault. The term was first used in biology in the...

The complete drying out of the Aral and Caspian seas, as isolated continental water bodies, and their potential impact on the climate and environment is examined with numerical simulations. Simulations use the atmospheric general circulation model (ECHAM5) as well as the hydrological discharge (HD) model of the Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie....

Within the framework of the EU Central-Europe project: ‘Development and applicationof mitigation and adaptation strategiesand measures for counteracting the global urban heat islands phenomenon (UHI)’,a data base and web atlas was prepared. The Urban Heat Island Atlas was produced by the Anton Melik Geographical Institute, ZRCSAZU. The database was...

In 2011 we started to publish special issues in Acta geographica Slovenica aiming to bring attention to selected topics we find interesting for our readers. While we published several articles on geotourism (e.g. Hose et al. 2011) in 51-2 issue, we are going to present two topics in 2013 and 2014 – this issue and 54-1 issue bring discussions on nat...

The paper discusses the definitions of natural disasters and recommends the implementation of definitions and classifications of natural disasters in accordance with those decreed at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) and Munich Re insurance Company (Munich RE) for administrative use in the Republic of Serbia. For the R...

Anthropogenic influence on weather has been increasingly published and discussed in the last decades. Climate changes caused by inadvertent anthropogenic influence are well underway. Hail suppression, which has been proven to have no influence on weather, will be considered in the article. Even though hail suppression as scientifically ungrounded a...

Rural development has been based on more than farming, forestry, and other production functions for some time. Globalization and the societal shift from production to consumption also have a undamental impact on the countryside, where we are discovering continually new patterns of social and economic organization. Local stakeholders primarily see n...

In his long career as a researcher, Ivan Gams was focused mainly on karstology, although he contributed significantly to physical geography and geography of natural hazards as well. These topics are central to more than 80% of Gams's scientific and professional articles. Since Gams wrote more than 150 scientific articles in just a few decades, he i...