Landscape change today is occurring more rapidly than in any other time in history. Among other influences such as global warming these changes are also driven by political decisions affecting ecosystem services. The overall research objective is to defi ne how the European Union’s...

Marginality is a complex phenomenon resulting from the specific natural, economic as well as socio-cultural attributes of individual regions. It includes impossibility (of majority) of the population living in a given territory to integrate itself into the main developmental trends (e. g. Moller...

The article describes the landscape planning possibilities for changing of rural zone functions on an example from a problem area in the district of Kaliningrad. During the field season of 2003 the group of landscape-ecological planning of Faculty of Geography and Geoecology, Kalinigrad State...

The strategy for rural development provides a differentiated approach to each type of rural areas. Particularly "sensitive " areas for rural development in Poland are remote rural areas, which are dominated by small farms with small economic strength. In many cases further agricultural...

Core objectives for rural development support for the programming period 2007-2013 are: (1) improving the competitiveness of agriculture and forestry, (2) improving the environment and the countryside, and (3) improving the quality of life in rural areas and encouraging diversification of...

The background, criteria and scope of the spatial definition of LFA are very similar in both countries. Farm eligibility criteria are entirely different. In Slovakia the whole agricultural area of a holding is eligible for payment. In the Czech Republic it is only the area of grassland. Only the...

Poland has poor water resources. Moreover, they are unevenly distributed in space and time. Some types of human activity diminished water resources and increased the frequency of extreme phenomena such as floods and draughts. The development of rural areas depends on the quality and quantity of...

Mountains and hilly regions in Poland are very important for Polish economy because they do not only account for 8% of Polish territory, but also fulfil a significant role in environmental protection of water supply for the rivers, in tourism and in the ecological chain of plants and animals....

The paper discusses whether it is possible to turn a region after mining activities back to its rural substance. The micro-region Sokolov-East (Northwest Bohemia) was chosen as an example. The region was dramatically impacted by opencast coal mining after WWII. Also the settlement structure was...

Agricultural production is going on at the signifi cant part of the total area of Hungary, thus it is understandable that nature conservation activity is dependent on the cooperation with agriculture. The cooperation of these two activities is extremely important in the case of protected...