Petr Sklenicka

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague | CULS · Faculty of Environmental Science

a b s t r a c t The spatial variability of farmland prices is determined by factors reflecting agricultural use, and also by location-specific characteristics, which are crucial to the conversion of farmland to non-farming uses. In co-operation with experienced real-estate brokers, we collected data from 286 transactions carried out in 2008. We ide...

a b s t r a c t There is a dichotomy in the view of wind farms among members of the public: on one hand, there is a desire for renewable energy sources, and on the other hand, there is a major concern about the visual impact of wind turbines used for power production. This concern for visual impact is a major factor in the reaction of the public to...

Land consolidation (LC) is a tool for improving the effectiveness of land cultivation and for supporting rural development. In the Czech Republic it is, in addition, used to remedy the damages and wrongs caused by 40 years of suppression of land ownership. This paper investigates the specific conditions and various outcomes of LC in three study are...

China has experienced dramatic economic growth and social development, especially in the period between 1978 and 2008. The biodiversity and the socioeconomic sustainability in China were under threat, and the loss of wetlands was a significant aspect of ecological deterioration in the country at that time. However, the driving factors for the loss...

Adopting a qualitative approach, this study performs a gender analysis of the climate change effects on rice farmers’ adaptation strategies (AS) in Mazandaran Province (northern Iran) based on the sustainable livelihood approach. For this purpose, 36 male and female heads of households in Arab Mahalla and Qajar Khel villages and 10 heads of househo...

Greenhouse gases (GHG) have extensive environmental effects by trapping heat and causing climate change and air pollution. Land plays a key role in the global cycles of GHG (i.e., carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrogen oxide (N2O)), and land use change (LUC) can lead to the release of such gases into the atmosphere or the removal of them...

Rapid urbanization increases pressure on extracting construction materials through quarrying, which is disrupting and re-making places worldwide. In this study, we examine how people's place making and sense of place are reconfigured through quarrying. Taking a case study approach, we investigate perceptions of sense of place after quarrying and so...

Land consolidation (LC) is a widespread form of rural planning and is often presented as an important tool for mitigating land degradation. We therefore decided to make a systematic review of the effects of LC projects implemented under different natural and socioeconomic conditions. Our results show that there is a major dichotomy in the understan...

CONTEXT Climate change is expected to adversely affect agricultural production, particularly in Iran where the agricultural sector forms the backbone of the economy. This is true for the agriculture sector of the southwest region of Iran which is largely rain-fed and dominated by smallholder farmers with minimal livelihood alternatives. Although se...

The increase in farm plot size is one of the most apparent and significant trends that have influenced central and eastern European agricultural landscapes since the 1950s. In many countries where the average plot size in traditional land-use systems did not exceed several hectares, present-day plots reach the size of 200 ha or more. In recent time...

Increased demand for fertile lands has resulted from the exponential growth of the world's population in the twenty-first century. This mechanism results in widespread land tenure adjustments in a specific arrangement of rights, partnerships, and structures, which is in direct opposition to the existence of land as a small and necessary asset. Whil...

Rural women’s contribution to reacting to climate change is highly significant but has been largely marginalized due to gender roles. This gender discrimination makes them more vulnerable to a variety of threats. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the behaviour of female rice farmers in Mazandaran Province, in northern Iran, toward...

The Czech and English language versions of the book summarise the results of a five-year project by a team of landscape ecologists, archaeologists and historical geographers on the topic of historical field systems (Plužinas) in an accessible way for the general public. The preserved remnants of historical agricultural landscapes are valuable histo...

Sustainable landscape development (SLD) has received much attention worldwide as a concept, linking landscape and sustainability science in spatial planning, landscape design and management. Using the Třeboň Basin in the Czech Republic as a case study – a landscape characterised by an artificial system of 460 fishponds – we explore the relationship...

Genetic modification (GM) has been used as a method to produce higher yields for consumption. However, the impact of genetic modification technology on agriculture in developing countries at the farm level often remains unclear. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the environmental, social and economic consequences of genetically modified (GM...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Historical field systems are an essential part of the traditional cultural landscape of societies with primarily agricultural subsistence. They embody many functions and values, as they affect the productional, ecological and hydrological functioning of the landscape, its cultural values, the way people perceive the landscape, and their impact on p...

Sediment rating curves (SRCs) constitute a satisfactory deterministic approach to represent the sediment regime in catchments with limited or poor-quality records. Conversely, stochastic approaches like magnitude–frequency analysis have only lately been used directly on sediment records. This study aims to provide insight on the impact of SRC metho...

Assessing the impact of water erosion events can provide valuable information for sustainable land management. The Czech Republic's Monitoring Erosion of Agricultural Land program only records erosion events that exceed certain thresholds of erosion tolerance criteria (percentage of affected plot area, quantities of eroded soil, other material dama...

This study investigated the change in soil organic carbon (SOC), soil labile carbon (C), soil total nitrogen (N), particulate organic carbon (POC), mineralizable soil C (Min-C) in soil aggregate fractions, and soil particles size at 0–30 cm soil depth of the semi-steppe rangelands in Central Iran (Sheida and Khargosh regions). The study used a full...

This research used a qualitative and quantitative approach to classify factors influencing wheat farmers' social, economic, and environmental vulnerability in Khorasan Razavi province, Iran, from the perspective of elite wheat farmers and agricultural specialists, and then to establish some recommendations based on the results. To achieve the study...

Co-management requires two or more organizations that collectively manage natural capital. This study aimed to explore the function of social capital in the cycle of establishing co-management in southeastern Iranian rural communities (who participated in the Rehabilitation of Forest Landscapes and Degraded Land (RFLDL) project). Since measuring so...

Settlement history is an interdisciplinary topic which connects history, archaeology, paleoecology, historical geography and other scientific disciplines. In Central Europe, one of important questions regards the dating of origin of medieval settlements. In 2020, our team published a study comparing the dating obtained from medieval written records...

Indigenous knowledge about climate change that makes adaptability necessary by coping strategies leads to the sustainability of nomadic livelihoods. This paper proposed a new adaptability approach, an association coping strategy (ACS), which is established based on the association rulesʼ recommendations. The adaptability was empirically analyzed us...

Collisions of vehicles with animals are an increasing problem, and due to the loss of animal, as well as human, life is an active topic in applied ecology. One of the best-known mitigation methods to avoid collisions is the provision of dedicated road warning signs. However, due to changes in landscape, in the densities of cars and animals, and to...

Natural calamities such as drought, famine, and climate change have collided to create a humanitarian crisis. For the Horn of Africa (HoA), famine is among the factors that have caused the worst historical damages to the individual countries. Man-made calamities such as decentralized agricultural, pastoral activities and forest clearing are also ro...

This survey study aimed to explore landholders' perceptions of possible threats and opportunities of the CSLO scheme in the Chehel-Chay watershed located in Golestan province, Iran. Furthermore, the influence of these perceptions on the intention to adopt the scheme was assessed. For this purpose, 345 landholders were selected through multi-stage s...

Identifying key drivers of land degradation is essential to mitigate or prevent land degradation, promote land recovery, and achieve improvement at national and international levels. The aim of this study was to test whether the level of land tenure security affects the degree of soil degradation. The level of land tenure security was tested on two...

In recent years, sustainability has always been one of the most important approaches in policy making and program development in general, especially in the agricultural sector. On the other hand, land leveling and consolidation programs are usually implemented as the development programs of the agricultural sector in different regions of Iran. Thus...

Ethanol is a natural by-product of the fermentation process of fruit sugars and is occasionally consumed by fruit-eating and tree sap drinking birds. Information on this form of alcohol consumption features in the scientific literature. However, as pets or as wild animals living close to humans in urban habitats, birds have increasing possibilities...

In various research fields, from archaeology to landscape history and ecology, it is important to know the date of the origin of historical settlements (i.e. towns, villages, hamlets, isolated farms) as precisely as possible. In Central Europe, there are two primary ways to obtain the date when a settlement was founded: “historical dating” (based o...

Land degradation results from natural and from socioeconomic factors. However, the socioeconomic factors are less adequately understood than the natural factors. In this study, we focus on the impact of the socioeconomic status of land owners and land users on soil degradation trends in the Czech Republic over a period of 14-20 years. The trends we...

Is there some kind of historical memory and folk wisdom that ensures that a community remembers about very extreme phenomena, such as catastrophic floods, and learns to establish new settlements in safer locations? We tested a unique set of empirical data on 1293 settlements founded in the course of nine centuries, during which time seven extreme f...

Human populations tend to grow steadily, because of the ability of people to make innovations, and thus overcome and extend the limits imposed by natural resources. It is therefore questionable whether traditional concepts of population ecology, including environmental carrying capacity, can be applied to human societies. The existence of carrying...

Visual impact is one of the main factors influencing the acceptance of wind farms by the public and by the authorities. It therefore often sets the environmental and social limits of energy policy and energy use. However, the assessment of visual impacts is subjective, as is often pointed out by critics of the evaluation process. The study presente...

This study shows the importance of landscape scene composition in relation to aesthetic ratings used in preference research where static and dynamic presentation methods substitute landscape onsite evaluation. We aimed to evaluate whether the method of presenting a landscape scene influenced aesthetic ratings and whether these potential differences...

Land tenure insecurity is one of the worldwide problems that often leads to soil degradation. We tested whether owner-operators maintain a higher level of soil quality and biochemical activity than tenantoperators and how this effect is modified by the agricultural system (organic vs. conventional) in arable fields. We selected 45 plots with cambis...

A high level of fragmentation of farmland ownership is an important underlying cause of land degradation and, at the same time, an obstacle to sustainable land management. This study makes the first-ever analysis of long-term trends in the rate of fragmentation. Our study covers the period from the earliest stages of the current form of ownership p...

Historic rural landscapes are valuable not only as artefacts and as cultural heritage, but also as natural sites with great scenic qualities. Unfortunately, the total area of these landscapes was dramatically reduced in the course of the second half of the 20th century. In our study, we focus on the development of 38 fragments of medieval hedgerow-...

Although perceptions of landscape aesthetics are currently attracting great research interest, some aspects of the topic have remained almost unexamined. This review highlights some less studied areas that are of particular importance for landscape management, with special focus on rapidly growing exurban areas. While the visual quality of the envi...

Extreme differences in agricultural holding size not only among countries within the EU as a whole but also within the farm structures of individual countries create considerable uncertainty for establishing optimal political and economic instruments to support sustainable rural development. This study explores the determinants influencing the spat...

Conversion of farmland to nonfarm uses significantly influences the spatial variability of farmland prices. We tested 12 factors of land prices that experienced real estate brokers indicated to be the most important determinants for conversion of farmland to non-agricultural use. Five factors can be described as landscape, four as geographic, and t...

The quality of people’s knowledge of nature has always had a significant influence on their approach to wildlife and nature conservation. However, direct interactions of people with nature are greatly limited nowadays, especially because of urbanization and modern lifestyles. As a result, our isolation from the natural world has been growing. Here,...

Farmland ownership fragmentation is one of the important drivers of land-use changes. It is a process that in its extreme form can essentially limit land management sustainability. Based on a typology of land degradation and its causes, this process is here classified for the first time as an underlying cause which through tenure insecurity causes...

Background Three groups of stakeholders are mainly involved in the planning, assessment, and approval processes for wind parks: the planners, the public, and the responsible public authorities. These groups have varying aims, and there are various ways of looking at proposals to set up a wind park. In particular, the viewpoints of planners and gove...

Development of mining operations can generate social conflicts between mining companies, government and community members. In this context, indication of public knowledge of mining practice and its drivers is needed to identify the level of public education in mining issues and the channels of communication with the government and mining companies....

This study deals with an assessment of the visual quality of landscapes, and specifically with the perception of selected elements in the landscape. The aim of the study was to find out how particular elements are perceived in various landscape types, whether this perception is affected by the landscape type in which the elements are placed, and to...

Land tenure security is widely considered to be a fundamental factor in motivating farmers to adopt sustainable land management practices. This study aims to establish whether it is true that owner-operators adopt more effective soil conservation measures than tenant-operators, and whether well-designed agro-environmental instruments can provide su...

Previous studies of visual preferences for landscapes have been dominated by papers monitoring the presence of individual landscape features or their physical attributes. The objective of our study has been to evaluate how the representation rate of these features affects visual preferences for a landscape. We have studied a post-mining landscape t...

The paper brings about results of a questionnaire survey on visual landscape preferences of Czech respondents – visitors of several Protected Landscape Areas situated in the Czech Republic. To ensure a wide range of landscape scenes to be chosen from, a set of 24 photographs divided into two groups – open landscapes and rural settlement landscapes...

Extreme farmland ownership fragmentation is becoming a limiting factor for sustainable land management in some countries. Scattered, excessively small parcels cease to be viable for individual farming, and owners feel forced to rent these parcels to larger enterprises farming on adjacent land. Our study demonstrates a phenomenon that we call the Fa...

Cross-border research enables studying the importance of broad-scale political and socioeconomic factors on land-cover changes. Our plot-based study using GIS analysis of interpreted aerial photographs evaluates changes in rural landscape patterns on both sides of the Austrian–Czech border during 1952–2009. The method compares 20 pairs of 1 × 1 km...

The reclamation of post-mining landscapes presents a unique opportunity to create beautiful landscapes. Public participation in the design of new landscapes is possible if assessing landscape preferences is treated as a part of the reclamation process. During reclamation, emphasis should be given to particular landscape features because people tend...

This paper discusses the situation that occurs after rehabilitation of land following open-pit brown coal mining, when the issue of transferring minor landmarks (small landscape monuments as crosses, statues, small wayside chapels) back to their original location from where they had been moved via preservation transfer arises. One of two situations...

Mining and post-mining landscape is a subcategory of a cultural landscape in which cultural attributes are in a strong contrast with natural ones. The landscape character either temporarily but mostly for decades is fundamentally changed including attributes which otherwise are difficult to change, such as topography, composition of local soils, ve...

This special issue follows on work and results presented in the 12th Symposium on Environmental Issues and Waste Management in Energy and Mineral Production, held in the heart of Europe, Prague, the Czech capital city in the early summer 2010. It attracted worldwide participants coming from more than 25 countries. In view of the highly topical natu...

Knížka je souborem příběhů, fejetonů a esejů o krajině a lidech, kteří v ní žijí. Většinou jde o texty dosud nepublikované, jen několik z nich vyšlo v Lidových novinách, v týdenících Ekonom a Euro nebo v časopise Ochrana přírody. Autor pozoruje krajinu očima vysokoškolského pedagoga, vědce, projektanta, ale také třeba rybáře nebo kulináře. Představ...

The study presented here focuses on visual preferences expressed by respondents for five relatively natural habitat types used in land reclamation projects in the North-West Bohemian brown coal basins (Czech Republic). Respondents evaluated the perceived beauty of the habitat types using a photograph questionnaire, on the basis of the positively sk...

Land consolidation (LC) is an effective program for land ownership defragmentation. The main objectives of this study are: i) to analyze the characteristics of 487 study areas before and after implementation of LC; ii) to evaluate these study areas according to the influence of historical, environmental and socio-economic driving forces on the pre-...

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar os efeitos de um ecótono entre floresta e campo arável sobre comunidades de minhocas. Cinco locais (blocos) com diferentes tipos de rotação de culturas utilizados no campo foram estudados na Boêmia Central, República Tcheca. Emcada bloco, amostragens foram feitas em sete linhas paralelas perpendiculares a um tr...

Remnants of medieval field patterns, called “pluzina” in the Czech Republic, are valuable historical landscapes, similar in character to the bocage landscapes typical for some countries in Western Europe. The original historical pattern of fields and meadows has persisted due to the stabilizing network of hedgerows. As in other countries, the devel...

The relation between landscape structure and its drivers is a central issue in studies of landscape ecology. However, agricultural land fragmentation is dealt with in only a few such studies. We have investigated the effects of ownership and soil quality on agricultural land fragmentation in the highly fragmented ownership patterns that characteriz...

The aesthetic value of landscape is one of the most threatened attributes of the human environment. This threat is particularly dramatic in post-mining landscapes. The rehabilitation of post-mining landscapes requires an interdisciplinary planning approach. Aesthetic value is a major criterion when evaluating the success of landscape restoration. T...

Many very different approaches to landscape patterns are used all over the world in landscape ecology, landscape planning and management. Intensive development of geographical information systems in the last decade has meant increasing interest in analysing landscape changes. GIS has enabled quantification of the spatial changes in large areas, and...

Landscape character is an important quality of natural and cultural environments, and is therefore protected against deterioration. Landscape character is determined by specific attributes and features that imply its nature - its uniqueness and distinctiveness. Landscape character is indicated not only by the presence of positive features but also...

Edges between cropfields and forests are significant for biological diversity, but little is known as to their effects on crop production. The principal objective of this study was to assess the growth and yield of silage maize in relation to: (1) distance to the forest edge, (2) edge orientation, and (3) changes in forest edge effect during the ve...

Remediation of the environmental (and social) disturbances caused by opencast brown coal mining in the past in north-west Bohemia is a priority for state environmental policy. In order to provide a concept for full restoration of land following disturbance by opencast mining, a special interdisciplinary project supported by a grant from the Czech M...

Land-use changes and attributes of landscape heterogeneity have been monitored in four study areas, representing different landscape types, between 1845 and 2000. The results show various rates of simplification of land-use patterns in all study areas, taking into consideration natural conditions and human activities. The main objectives of this pa...

Ecological networks play a key role in the rehabilitation of post-mining landscapes. Revitalising a post-mining site is a demanding task. It is necessary to consider not only the areas directly affected by open-cast mining, but also the surrounding areas. This paper presents a method for selecting the most valuable parts of the landscape for the ec...

Kniha přináší obšírný přehled definic krajiny a přístupů k ní, stejně jako multioborový přehled metod hodnocení krajiny. Autor představuje systém krajinného plánování i jednotlivé nástroje/formy krajinného plánování.

This paper analyses two hydrologically relevant soil characteristics - total porosity and the infiltration rate between the forest edge and the abutting crop field (100 m from the edges). The study was conducted in the Central Bohemian region of the Czech Republic in five study transects between March 1999 and September 2000. The experiment was car...