Environmental stressors and stress as a natural/human interdisciplinary issue: a case study from the northwestern part of the Czech Republic

Abstract

The article is concerned with landscape assessment from the point of view of the environmental (landscape) geography. It deals with theoretical background and a multi-criteria set of environmental stress indicators. Environmental stress represents an intersection of stressors from both ecological and social subsystems. it can be understood as a complex reflection of negative anthropogenic influences in spatial-temporal dimensions. Environmental stress assessment is monitoring negative influences on the ecological subsystem (topography, air, water, soil and biota) and on the social subsystem (demographic and economical variables). The case studies are located in the north western part of the Czech Republic, the Czech-German borderland. Negative anthropogenic effects on the landscape, (ecological or social stress changes in the landscape system) are monitored in the period of last 70 years during which the changes were most eminent. The presented methodological conceptualization enables to evaluate any random area also in terms of broader spatial and functional connections. Compared to other methodologies that evaluate the anthropopressures by monitoring of land use changes, the proposed procedure also enables to indicate driving forces significantly influencing conditions in chosen study areas