Case study of integrating ecosystem managememnt into spatial planning in rural environment

The landscape is an open system driven by interactions between natural and anthropogenic elements. Their long-term impact is responsible for the current form and status of the landscape. Integrated landscape management enables to implement particular solutions to mitigate the effects of threats to the ecological stability of the environment, to preserve and support diversity of ecosystems, to improve ecologically less stable parts of landscape and their spatial spread, as well as the possibility to maintain important cultural heritage of the landscape. The aim of the study was to aid local and regional spatial planning in a headwater catchment by a complex quantitative assessment of risks of flash flooding, muddy floods and soil erosion caused by extreme rainfall.  The research on and the design of protection measures were realized in the cadaster of the village situated on the border to Moravia in Slovakia. Generally accepted robust quantitative methods for risk mitigation, which are simple enough, but are yielding reliable predictions, were integrated into complex mitigation measures in order to improve the ecological stability and recreational potential of the area. Present land management practices are increasing the risk of flash flooding and soil erosion, including rill erosion on the arable land in the region with prevailingly flysch geological structures. A set of flood detention storages, infiltration trenches and agrotechnical measures on the arable land were proposed for the reduction of the extreme runoff and erosion. The effectiveness of the proposed measures showed that we were able to reduce the amount of soil erosion to permissible values. The results were integrated into a spatial erosion and flood protection scheme which will be the bases of spatial planning on a local scale for sustainable agriculture and will enable recreational use of the riverine areas and of the hilly landscape.