LANDSCAPE CHARACTERISTICS OF COMMON LAND IN SLOVENIA POKRAJINSKE ZNAČILNOSTI SKUPNIH ZEMLJIŠČ V SLOVENIJI Mauro Hrvatin, Drago Perko Almost nine tenths of common agricultural land lies in Alpine mountains. Skoraj devet desetin vseh skupnih kmetijskih zemljišč leži v alpskih gorovjih. Landscape characteristics of common land in Slovenia DOI: 10.3986.AGS48101 UDC: 911.53:711.14(497.4) 332.334.2:631(497.4) COBISS: 1.01 ABSTRACT: Common land is land with an ancient form of ownership. At one time it was economically important, but now its importance lies in the preservation of cultural landscapes and ecological balance. This article uses the geographic information system to analyze selected landscape indicators with respect to various types of agricultural land and determine whether and to what extent the assertion holds true that in Slovenia common agricultural land is preserved primarily in areas with poorer natural conditions for agriculture. KEY WORDS: Slovenia, landscape, common land, land use, natural conditions. The article was submitted for publication on May 18, 2008. ADDRESSES: Mauro Hrvatin, B. Sc. Anton Melik Geographical Institute Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Gosposka ulica 13, SI - 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia E-mail: mauro@zrc-sazu.si Drago Perko, Ph.D. Anton Melik Geographical Institute Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Gosposka ulica 13, SI - 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia E-mail: drago@zrc-sazu.si Contents 1 Introduction 2 Common land 3 Natural indicators 4 Surface height 5 Surface slope 6 Surface aspect 7 Rocks 8 Soils 9 Vegetation 10 Conclusion 11 References 9 9 11 12 13 14 15 15 17 18 20 1 Introduction Common land is a very specific type of cultural landscape that has been shaped by the variable mutual impacts of natural and social landscape elements. This article uses the geographic information system to determine whether and to what extent the assertion holds true that common agricultural land, in comparison with other types of agricultural land, is preserved primarily in areas with poorer natural conditions for agriculture. Selected landscape factors or indicators were analyzed with respect to types of land use and differences between these were established; these were then used to determine the connection between the natural indicators and types of land. A connection was established: • descriptively through the distribution of particular land types into classes of selected natural indicators, • computationally with the Hirschman coefficient of concentration cc (Blejec 1976; Perko 2001,23), which is based on the proportions of individual land types by class of selected natural indicators and has a value between 0, where a specific type of land used is evenly distributed throughout the classes, and 1, where it is concentrated in only one class (the higher the coefficient of concentration, the higher the concentration of that land type is and the greater the probability that this concentration is not random but instead dependent upon the natural indicator under consideration), • computationally with the contingency correlation coefficient r (Blejec 1976; Perko 2001, 24), which is based on hi2, or the frequency with which a land type occurs in all classes of the contingency table of a particular natural indicator. 2 Common land Common land is territory with communal ownership, which means that all members of the community may use it. This is an ancient form of land ownership because its roots extend all the way back to tribal society. At one time it was economically important (Blaznik 1970); it supported individual families and even entire villages. Now common land is more important from the environmental and cultural viewpoints because common land maintains ecological balance and preserves cultural landscapes. Many studies in Europe have confirmed that increasing numbers of people favor the preservation of common land (Fausold, Lilieholm 1996; Internet 1). Throughout Slovenian territory, most common land was divided among farmers by the end of the 19th century, and the rest was nationalized after World War II (Vilfan 1996). Following Slovenia's independence in 1991, this land began to be returned to restored farming or grazing associations (Kladnik 1999, 268). By 2007, 71,789ha had been returned, of these 29,089ha of forest and 42,700ha of farmland (Petek, Urbanc 2007, 48). At least 1,000 farming associations operated in Slovenia to the end of World War II (Dodi~ 2007), whereas in 2007 there were 665 registered farming associations (Petek, Urbanc 2007, 43). Unfortunately, farming associations do not use three-quarters of their common land. This is inactive (passive) farmland, which is mostly overgrown and currently should no longer be counted as farmland. Farmers only actually use 10,916ha, or 25.6% of common agricultural land, according to statistics from the Land Parcel Information System (GERK) of Slovenia's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Food (Ministrstvo ... 2007), which form the basis for receiving direct income from agriculture (Petek, Urbanc 2007, 50). This land is called active agricultural land. Active common agricultural land includes 0.4% arable land, 0.1% orchards, 21.0% meadows, 74.3% pastures, and 4.2% overgrown land (Petek, Urbanc 2007, 55). Thus, most active common agricultural land is used for pasture. For this study, only active, currently-used common farmland is considered »common agricultural land,« and it is compared with other farmland, for which overgrown land and nonagricultural land were not taken into consideration. All land in Slovenia is therefore divided into: • common agricultural land, • other agricultural land, and • nonagricultural land. The extent and distribution of other agricultural land and nonagricultural land is based on a database of agricultural land use (Dejanska raba... 2005), which links the farm register and land and property •< Figure 1: Distribution of common agricultural land, other agricultural land, and nonagricultural land in Slovenia. Figure 2: Velika planina (Big Pasture), a rugged karst plateau on the south side of the Kamnik-Savinja Alps, is Slovenia's largest mountain pasture. Its common land may be used by more than 150 grazing-rights holders from the settlements below the southern edge of the pasture. registers. It is used to determine the levels of subsidies for agricultural land (Lipej 2001). The data sources are digital orthophoto maps at a scale of 1: 5,000, which are based on black-and-white aerial photographs at a scale of 1: 17,500 and field verification. 3 Natural indicators In 2005, the ZRC SAZU produced digital elevation models with resolutions of 12.5 m, 25 m, and 100 m for the Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia (Podobnikar 2002; Podobnikar 2005; Podobnikar 2006). Relief indicators for this study came from the 25-m digital elevation model (Digitalni... 2005). It consists of height data points above sea level at 25-m intervals from north to south or east to west, which are the vertices of square cells with 25-m sides, 35-m diagonals, and an area of 625 m2. Testing demonstrated that its accuracy for Slovenia as a whole is 3.2 m, for flat areas 1.1m, for low hills 2.3 m, for hills 3.8 m, and for mountains 7.0 (Podobnikar 2006,25). The three basic geometric properties of the surfaces that can be determined using the geographic information system and the digital elevation model are distance, inclination, and curvature with respect to the horizontal and vertical planes (Perko 2002; Hrvatin, Perko 2002; Hrvatin, Perko 2003; Perko 2007b). Of these, three properties or indicators that are most often used in geography were selected: • the height (elevation) of the surface, or its distance from the horizontal plane, • the slope of the surface, or its inclination with respect to the horizontal plane, • the aspect of the surface, or its inclination with respect to the vertical plane. Surface heights were given in meters, surface slopes in degrees from 0 for a horizontal surface to 90 for a vertical one, and surface aspects in degrees from 0 for the maximum southerly exposure and 180 for the maximum northerly exposure. In addition to these three relief indicators, 3 other natural indicators were also included: rock type (Verbi~ 1998), soil type (Vr{~aj 2007), and potential vegetation (Zupan~i~ et al. 1998). The data were divided into 15 classes for each natural indicator. The software packages IDRISI (Eastman 1995) and ArcGIS (Shaner, Wrightsell 2000; Tucker 2000; McCoy, Johnston 2001) were used to calculate the relief indicators and link the natural indicators, or the data layers of relief, rock, soil, vegetation, and common land in the geographic information system. 4 Surface height The average height of common agricultural land is 1,368.4m, of other agricultural land 377.2 m, and of nonagricultural land 627.3 m. The ratio between the surface height of common and other agricultural land is almost 4:1. The standard deviation of the height of common agricultural land is 374.1, of other agricultural land 208.7, and nonagricultural land 375.2, which is practically the same as that of common agricultural land. This means that the variability of height in common agricultural land is nearly twice as much as that of other agricultural land. More than four-fifths of common agricultural land lies above 1,000 m, almost one-half between 1,200 and 1,600, and almost one-tenth in each 100-meter zone between 1,200 and 1,900 m. Less than one-third lies Table 1: Distribution of land by height class. classes 0