Goals of the ‘Landscape Management with Respect to Global Change’ activity
Under the ‘Diversity of Life and Ecosystem Health’ programme, there are several activities coordinated by the Czech Academy of Sciences and funded by the AV21 Strategy research project. Specifically, the aim of the ‘Landscape Management with Respect to Global Change’ activity, taking place in 2016 under the auspices of the Institute of Botany and the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Science, was to unify the results of landscape research at individual academic institutions of the of the Czech Academy of Science, to present their work and to appropriately communicate its results to target groups such as policy makers, NGOs and the general public. The Platform for the Landscape has managed to create a communication framework for disseminating knowledge about the effects of droughts and floods and their impact on the Czech landscape in the form of strategic, scientific and educational materials. In addition, it has brought specific proposals for minimizing the negative impacts on the landscape.
Activity outputs
- Analysis and evaluation of landscape integration and its landscape-related issues in selected policy papers focused on territorial planning and regional landscape studies.
- Adaptive measures were prepared and submitted to the Ministry of Environment of the Czech Republic by a work group of the National Action Plan for Climate Change Adaptation
- Two seminars on landscape and forestry were organized by the Environment Committee of the Czech Academy of Sciences (within the FORUM 2000 conference).
- The book entitled ‘Landscape and people’ has been compiled and released in the series ‘Průhledy’ [‘Vistas’] published by the Academia publishing house. On nearly 160 pages, around 70 authors from 19 institutions present landscape-related topics from different points of view and explore it from its basic components to the level of landscape management and planning.
- The website (nasekrajina.local) has been set up, along with the Platform for Landscape Facebook page, to inform about the project’s goals, implementation and outputs.
- A bilingual travelling exhibition dealing with the land use changes in the Czech Republic has been created. It highlights the pressing aspects of our relationship to the land and the way we farm it. The exhibition was co-founded by the Biology Centre and Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences and has so far been viewed by visitors in nine cities.
WHAT WE DO? (Goals of the ‘Forests as Part of the Landscape and a Source of Knowledge’ activity)
In 2017 this activity takes account of the fact that research in forest ecology has recently brought new knowledge pertaining to global environmental change, which, in addition to climate change, also includes direct human impact. The goal is to engage professionals within the Platform in a public debate and to prepare proposals on the basis of scientific knowledge for necessary changes in legislation that would reflect this knowledge and also to disseminate it to the public.
WHY?
Forests cover about a third of our territory, and they are such a distinctive feature that their management closely relates to climate change and the protection of natural habitats and biodiversity. Protection of forest biodiversity and forest soil entails the protection of forest species and communities already protected by legislation. There should be a specific management strategy aiming at the long-term existence of every protected organism and forest type. That includes the entire spectrum of economic interventions, including traditional forestry practices (e.g. coppicing) and non-intervention. A specific management system should be interconnected with regional conservation systems in the tightest way possible (and also with the Czech system of protected areas of the European Natura 2000 network). The recently established Platform for Sustainable Landscape Management (also known as the Platform for the Landscape), based on the European Landscape Convention, has identified the potential threats related to climate change. The new Forest Act, which is currently in preparation, will be the focus of upcoming efforts.