Dušan Romportl

Charles University in Prague & VUKOZ

Landscape and its development is crucial for viability and management of protected areas, therefore, we focused on Czech large protected areas and analysed their land cover and landscape structure changes from the 1950s to recent times. Based on four milestones (1950, 1990, 2004 and 2020), data from topographic maps and aerial imagery were vectoriz...

In the face of ongoing anthropogenic pressure and biodiversity loss, there is a need to protect nature more effectively. Therefore, we propose a comprehensive and consecutive approach utilising landscape ecological principles and methods for effective landscape protection and spatial nature conservation. Methods applicable in various conditions are...

This article focuses on the evolution of anthropogenic pressure across Czech large-scale protected areas (protected landscape areas and national parks, n = 30) over the last 60 years. In four periods (1960s; 1990; 2004; between 2016 and 2020) we analysed the development of artificial structures (built-up areas, recreational areas, roads, dirt roads...

Military training areas are important biodiversity refuges and may serve as viable components of regional conservation networks, mainly due to the blocking of ecological succession by the disturbance regime creating a heterogeneous open habitat mosaic hosting many threatened species. However, European armies have undergone downsizing over the past...

The recovery and expansion of formerly isolated wolf populations in Europe raise questions about the nature of their interactions and future consequences for population viability and conservation. Will fragmented populations fuse or maintain a certain level of isolation with migration? Central Europe is suitable for obtaining empirical data in this...

Purely natural land formations are increasingly rare in today’s world, as most areas have been shaped, to varying degrees, by human influence over time. To better understand ongoing changes in the natural environment, we adopted an approach that involves identifying global systems with a significant anthropogenic component. In this study, we develo...

The main aim of our study was to identify and delineate a coherent ecological network for large carnivores, using a unified methodology, which would be flexible and serve as a basis for nature and landscape connectivity protection across the Carpathians. We applied a comprehensive methodological approach based on habitat suitability modelling follo...

National parks as wilderness islands. The article is focused on Czech national parks as the most valuable and protected parts of landscape. It explains the reasons for their designation; similarities and differences among them. Main topics such as appropriate management of the area, species protection and recreation are discussed. Challenges includ...

Cestodes of the family Anoplocephalidae parasitize a wide range of usually herbivorous hosts including e.g. rodents, ungulates, primates, elephants and hyraxes. While in some hosts, the epidemiology of the infection is well studied, information is lacking in others. In this study of mountain gorillas in the Virunga Massif, an extensive sample set c...

Atlas změn krajiny v českých velkoplošných zvláště chráněných územích 1950−2020 představuje ve čtyřech časových horizontech (50. léta 20. století, okolo roku 1990, okolo roku 2004 a mezi lety 2016 až 2020) změny krajinného pokryvu a antropogenních struktur (zástavby, rekreace a komunikací), respektive fragmentace krajiny těmito fenomény, pro všechn...

Natural processes and biodiversity are under pressure, especially in the human-dominated region of Central Europe. Therefore, an effective approach is needed for the conservation of the last fragments of valuable habitats. Šumava National Park is one of the biggest relatively natural forested areas within the cultural landscapes of Czechia and Cent...

Animal tolerance towards humans can be a key factor facilitating wildlife–human coexistence, yet traits predicting its direction and magnitude across tropical animals are poorly known. Using 10,249 observations for 842 bird species inhabiting open tropical ecosystems in Africa, South America, and Australia, we find that avian tolerance towards huma...

Changes to the Earth's environment, increasing anthropogenic pressure, and the global decline of biodiversity bring the need to establish spatial frameworks for the monitoring and assessment of such dynamic processes. Several environmental stratifications have been developed at the global level; however, most of them only include natural conditions...

Aim Several large‐mammal species in Europe have recovered and recolonized parts of their historical ranges. Knowing where suitable habitat exists, and thus where range expansions are possible, is important for proactively promoting coexistence between people and large mammals in shared landscapes. We aimed to assess the opportunities and limitation...

Capsule Bird species richness was highest in forest and urban habitat types, lower in grassland and wetland, and lowest in cropland. Aims To investigate bird species richness patterns across different habitat types in Czechia, Central Europe. Methods Data from a national breeding bird monitoring scheme in Czechia, based on mapping of positions of...

Abstract Appropriate management of European spruce forests in this time of climate change is a significant challenge. Uniform principles of quality forest practice must be applied, essentially in forests that are valuable from a conservation point of view. However, this may be problematic in protected areas with mixed ownership and disparate priori...

The anthropogenic impact on the functioning of natural systems and the concept of Anthropocene as a period of the human domination of the Earth has been widely discussed in literature in the past few decades. Consequently, several land systems classifications have been developed on a global scale to capture the diversity, intensity, and spatial dis...

Variation in bird community composition across habitats may be reflected by changes in species’ ecological characteristics. By their comparison between habitats, we can learn information about the factors underlying these changes. With this purpose, we used data from a nation-wide breeding bird monitoring scheme surveying birds in 15 habitat types...

The development of sustainable transport is a key challenge in societies where there is an accelerated need for socio-economic development. This is the case for seven countries from central and south-eastern Europe that share the Carpathian Mountains. The challenge of developing sustainable transport requires transdisciplinary, or at least cross-se...

Human activities have shaped the environment since long before the advent of agriculture and resulted in anthropogenic landscapes, which are sometimes perceived as natural, but are clearly shaped by dozens of previous generations. This study is the first to apply ecological niche modelling on a long time-series of archaeological data to illuminate...

Species distribution models are a useful tool applied in many branches of biology, especially when dealing with threatened organisms. In combination with GIS techniques, these models are especially important and valuable for predicting occurrence of rare species, for example, orchids. Orchids are an endangered plant group, protected in the whole wo...

The Virunga Massif mountain gorilla population has been periodically monitored since the early 1970s, with gradually increasing effort. The population declined drastically in the 1970s, but the numbers stabilized in the 1980s. Since then, the population has been steadily increasing within their limited habitat fragment that is surrounded by a dense...

The paper deals with the current spatio-temporal distribution of tourism in the Krkonoše Mts and its spatial environmental impacts. At present, the high intensity of tourism and the use of the Krkonoše Mts landscape for the needs of tourism are understood as the most signifi cant problems of the Krkonoše Mts. One of the main goals of the study is t...

The Czech rural landscape is a subject of research because it is affected by both intensification and extensification of land cover. This landscape was influenced in recent decades by political and socio-economic changes; we studied how these changes were reflected in the land cover development in protected areas. We selected ten Protected landscap...

Green infrastructure is a strategically planned network that broadens traditional biodiversity conservation methods to also encompass the concept of ecosystem services (ES). This study aims to identify the network of green infrastructure in Central Europe. An analysis of ecological connectivity is based on ES supply quantified for CORINE land cover...

Conservation efforts have led to the recovery of the endangered mountain gorilla populations. Due to their limited potential for spatial expansion, population densities increased, which may alter the epidemiology of infectious diseases. Recently, clinical gastrointestinal illnesses linked to helminth infections have been recorded in both gorilla po...

Abstract Within the project on monitoring of landscape changes in large-scale protected areas in Czechia we also monitor anthropogenic structures – roads, built-up and recreational areas. In this article we focused on anthropogenic structures in the five protected areas, which are protected and also highly visited by tourists especially for rock fo...

The border region between Austria, the Czech Republic, and Germany harbors the most south‐western occurrence of moose in continental Europe. The population originated in Poland, where moose survived, immigrated from former Soviet Union or were reintroduced after the Second World War expanded west‐ and southwards. In recent years, the distribution o...

Knowledge of landscape dynamics, functions and ecosystem services is key for evidence-based management of protected areas. These areas represent valuable landscapes, where the ability to provide functions and services should be preserved. The article introduces results of a research focused on landscape development in the Krkonoše National Park and...

The Methodology for identification of ecological corridors in the Carpathian countries using large carnivores as umbrella species has been developed in a close cooperation of partners within the framework of the project “Restoring and managing ecological corridors in mountains as the green infrastructure in the Danube basin” (ConnectGREEN). This i...

Land cover and anthropogenic structures affect landscape functionality and ability to provide ecosystem services. Evidence-based decision making supports responsible landscape management, which is needed especially in protected and exposed areas with many interests of future use. Here, we focused on land cover change and level of landscape fragment...

The aim of this paper is to explore and define the boundary of the zone of inland, mainly agricultural settlement in southern and western Bohemia, Czech Republic in the later prehistory, and to try to determine why such settlement appears not to have spread further into the Šumava foothills and mountains. With the help of predictive MaxEnt modellin...

This article presents preliminary results of the project on monitoring of landscape changes of the large-scale protected areas in the Czechia. Here, we focused on increasing human impact in the areas, especially on urban and recreational structures. We prepared data describing development of landscape from 1950s till recent. Topographic maps and ae...

One of the main questions in ecology and conservation is how organisms are governed and affected by their traits within the context of abiotic gradients. The main question of our study addresses how patch, topography, and land use influence conservation trait status (rarity and red-list index) of birds generally, and of farmland and woodland specia...

Spatial planning is the most important tool for balancing the needs of the society, economy and the environment. Spatial planning differs from one country to another due to the different conditions and historical background, but there are major similar characteristics. In the first phase of the project, we elaborated a comparison analysis about t...

The landscape dynamics, changes of its quality and structure are crucial for understanding past, present and future possibilities and trends in studied ecosystems. The objective of this article is to show partial results of a long-term project, which is focused on analysing landscape dynamics in protected areas in Czechia (National parks-NP, Protec...

Krajinný pokryv: vektorová polygonová vrstva, 9 kategorií; pořizováno manuální vektorizací na podkladu ZM, TM a ortofot; minimální velikost polygonu 0,8 ha Změny krajinného pokryvu jsou klíčové pro pochopení současného stavu a budoucích trendů vývoje ekosystémů, přinášejí s sebou významné změny funkcí i kvalitativních vlastností krajiny. To se přím...

Nálezová data: 13 vybraných druhů, které jsou předmětem ochrany PO a EVL Šumava (NDOP, databáze NP a CHKO Šumava). Proměnné popisující prostředí: nadmořská výška, sklon, orientace, solární radiace, průměrná teplota, průměrný roční úhrn srážek, krajinný pokryv, vzdálenost od nejbližší silnice, vzdálenost od nejbližšího sídla, vzdálenost od nejbližší...

Surveying mammals is always a challenge for field biologists. When those mammals are nocturnal and mostly arboreal, as in the case of the dormice (Gliridae), the task proves even more difficult. During the summers of 2015 and 2016 we carried out a national survey of edible dormouse (Glis glis) distribution in the Czech Republic. Twenty-one trained...

Aim The impact of Pleistocene climatic oscillations on tropical biomes is associated with changes in the extent of forest cover. Fruit bats have played a role in woodland dynamics via pollination and seed dispersal. We hypothesized that phylogeographic patterns of Rousettus on continental Africa and adjacent islands should show a signature of pluvi...

Ash dieback, caused by the ascomycete fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, has been rapidly expanding across Europe during the last two decades, posing a considerable threat to native ash populations. In this study, we applied regression-based models trained by field data, in conjunction with geographic information systems, to produce spatial prediction...

Land cover data: Aerial imagery was used. Images were taken in the summer season of each year (2006-2012); therefore the imagery for a particular year shows the conditions of second half of previous year and first half of year, when images were taken. Imagery has a pixel resolution of 20cm. Land cover was categorized into fourteen types. Mountain f...

Aim Population fragmentation represents a leitmotif of conservation biology, but the impact of population reconnection is less well studied. The recent recolonization of large carnivores in Europe is a good model for studying this phenomenon. We aim to show novel data regarding distribution and population genetic structure of the grey wolf in Centr...

Species distribution models are a useful tool and are now often used in many branches of biology, especially when dealing with threatened organisms. In combination with GIS techniques, these models are especially important and valuable for predicting the occurrence of rare species, for example orchids. Orchids are an endangered plant group, protect...

Understanding the ecological, behavioral and evolutionary response of organisms to changing environments is of primary importance in a human-altered world. It is crucial to elucidate how human activities alter gene flow and what are the consequences for the genetic structure of a species. We studied two lineages of the Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus...

Here we determine the distribution, numbers and habitat preferences of two of the largest species in the family Cervidae present in the Czech Republic, red deer and Eurasian elk. Red deer occurs predominantly in vast areas of forest, i.e. mainly in the mountains bordering this country and several large forest units in the interior. The range of thi...

Central European landscape has undergone dramatic changes during the last decades. Big changes in the political and economic systems resulted in a large-scale transformation in land use, especially in the agricultural and silvicultural sectors. At the same time, significant changes in urban regions were recorded. In order to quantify and compare th...

Extensive investigation of the impact of ash dieback in forest stands in the Czech Republic was conducted in 2013. Data on the defoliation of ash trees were collected from 1169 forest stands within the entire area of the Czech Republic. A set of 37 variables acquired from different databases (State Forests, GIS, Digital Terrain Model) describing si...

Species on the Earth are under increasing human pressure, according to some authors, the current rate of extinction occurred only a few times in the past, for the last time in the Cretaceous Period in the Mesozoic Era. The main goal of current nature conservation is to maintain the highest native biological diversity and to preserve and enhance lif...

This article focuses on comparison of the landscape of two National Parks (Bavarian and Bohemian Forest), which together create the largest area of wilderness in Central Europe. The article shows how different they are in social-economic and physical-geographical perspective. Social and economic conditions were introduced from perspective of path d...

Landscape typologies provide their users with a spatial framework, which could be used for management, assessment of landscape changes and monitoring of biodiversity or natural processes. The aim of this article is to distinguish and compare landscape types across the largest natural area within Central Europe. Cluster analysis based on physical-ge...

Poster shows land cover changes in Šumava NP after the Kyrill windstorm (2006-2012)

Phytophthora alni is an invasive organism that causes root and collar rot in alders, which significantly damages the forest and riparian vegetation of alder trees in Central and Western Europe. In the Czech Republic, this pathogen was first confirmed in 2001, and since then it has been gradually spreading from the west to the east. Here, we applied...

Recent studies showed that climate changes shape species distribution and could cause range shifts in the flyway level of the species. Here, we demonstrated changes in species habitat selection as a response to weather severity in twelve most abundant wintering waterbird species with prevailing increase in numbers during three investigated periods...

The study presents results of a camera trapping survey conducted in selected forested areas in southern and south-western Bohemia. The survey was carried out in the years 2013-2015 within 35 squares of 10x10 km mapping grid. It resulted in a dataset of 15,816 records (34,427 photographs) of medium-sized and large forest mammals. Besides rare and el...

Recent climate changes are most likely the major determining factor for the increasing importance of Central Europe for wintering waterbirds, given that most of the region is located on the edge of these species’ wintering ranges. A few recent large-scale studies have demonstrated changes in species distribution at the flyway level, but detailed st...

Landscape classification of Central Europe was carried out in order to define the spatial framework of environmentally homogeneous typological units. The output of such a classification would be used for further assessment of ecosystem services within the focus region. Classification was based on the cluster analysis of principal components, derive...

Maděra P. et al., eds., 2014. Czech villages in Romanian Banat: landscape, nature, and culture. Brno: Mendel University in Brno. The presented monograph represents one of the outputs from project "Creation and development of multidisciplinary team on the basis of landscape ecology. The aim of the book is to understand regularities of the functioni...

As in several Central European areas, in the Bohemian Forest Ecosystem (Germany and the Czech Republic), fenced feeding enclosures are used for the winter management of red deer (Cervus elaphus), which is an important component of the Eurasian lynx’s (Lynx lynx) winter diet. Using GPS telemetry data, we tested whether (1) lynx hunted red deer mainl...

The book summarizes the current knowledge about Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), grey wolf (Canis lupus) and brown bear (Ursus arctos) – three species of large carnivores occurring in the Czech Republic and together only in the Carpathian part of Moravian and Silesian regions. Lynx and wolves started to colonize also other areas in the Czech Republic, su...

The presented article introduces methods and some results of a project aiming to improve the protection of landscape permeability for migration of large mammals. The main aim of the project was delimitation of migration corridors, representing an ecological network connecting areas of existing, or potential presence of focal species. Based on mappi...

The future of the Šumava National Park is linked to discussions on its zoning, which has undergone significant changes since the establishmentof the Park. The present zonation was strongly criticized by experts, representatives of NGOs and international organizations. Over the lastcouple of years, politicians became more vocal in callings for a new...

The aim of this mini-review is to compile the first comprehensive list of alien invasive pathogens of forest woody plants in the area of the Czech Republic that is comparable with the European datasets. The presented overview is based on the paper previously published in Forest Protection Reporter (17/2013; in Czech) and later updated. The list has...

Regardless of their ecosystem functions, some insects are threatened when facing environmental changes and disturbances, while others become extremely successful. It is crucial for successful conservation to differentiate factors supporting species' current distributions from those triggering range dynamics. Here, we studied the sudden extralimital...

The main goal of this paper is to introduce new methodological approaches and outputs of semi-complex landscape typology of Czechia. Different approaches of landscape classification both in Czechia and the world are briefly presented. The main methodological output is a proposal of landscape typological classification, based on up-to-date dataset s...

Landscape typologies are widely recognised as useful tools for landscape management and planning. However, there is wide range of different approaches producing diverse outputs, which makes the usage of landscape typologies sometimes difficult or confusing in general practice (Wascher ed., 2005). The same situation is found in the Czech Republic, w...