Managing Green Infrastructure in Central European Landscapes Green infrastructure strategies and action plans based on transnational and regional assessments of its benefits and ecological functions Managing Green Infrastructure in Central European Landscapes – Green infrastructure strategies and action plans based on transnational and regional assessments of its benefits and ecological functions This E-Book was compiled as Deliverable D.C.6.2 of the Interreg Central Europe Project MaGICLandscapes “Managing Green Infrastructure in Central European Landscapes“ funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Lead Partner Technische Universität Dresden Faculty of Environmental Sciences Chair of Remote Sensing, Prof. Dr. Elmar Csaplovics Helmholtzstr. 10 01069 Dresden, Germany Project Partners Technische Universität Dresden, Germany Silva Tarouca Research Institute for Landscape and Ornamental Gardening, Czech Republic The Saxony Foundation for Nature and Environment, Germany Karkonosze National Park, Poland Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, Germany The Krkonoše Mountains National Park, Czech Republic University of Vienna, Austria Thayatal National Park, Austria Metropolitan City of Turin, Italy ENEA - Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Italy Editors: Anke Hahn, Christopher Marrs Layout: Anke Hahn Cover illustration and benefit icons: Anja Maria Eisen The MaGICLandscapes E-Book is published online: https://www.interreg-central.eu/Content.Node/MaGICLandscapes. html#Outputs This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivative Works 4.0 International License. Dresden, October 2020 VÚKOZ Contents Editorial 4 CHAPTER 1: ANALYSING THE FUNCTIONS, SERVICES AND BENEFITS OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A BETTER LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT IN CENTRAL EUROPE 11 Transnational Framework of Green Infrastructure Assessment (Work Package 1) 12 Assessing green infrastructure functionality at European, regional and local scale (Work Package 2) 16 Strategies for intervention at European, regional and local level (Work Package 3) 21 CHAPTER 2: GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE STRATEGIES IN MAGICLANDSCAPES’ CASE STUDY AREAS? 25 Kyjovsko, Czech Republic 26 Dübener Heide Nature Park, Germany 30 Karkonosze National Park and Jelenia Góra Basin, Poland 35 Krkonoše Mountains National Park and surrounding area, Czech Republic 39 Tri-border region Czech Republic – Germany – Poland 43 Eastern Waldviertel and Western Weinviertel, Austria 47 Thayatal National Park, Austria 51 Po Hills around Chieri, Italy 55 Upper Po Plain 58 CHAPTER 3: GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT IN CENTRAL EUROPE 61 Michael Hošek: Green infrastructure as an opportunity, green infrastructure as a threat? 60 Christiane Eberts: Green Infrastructure – potentials for urban development in Dresden and Chemnitz 66 Hana Skokanová et al.: Mapping green infrastructure and assessing its connectivity in an agricultural region of Kyjovsko, Czech Republic 70 Janusz Korzeń: Green infrastructure and valorization of the landscape around Karpacz/Poland 77 Harmonisation of grey and green infrastructures – examples from Lower Austria 80 Jacob Seilern: Power lines and their importance as part of green infrastructure, using the example of sections of the 380 kV high-voltage line between Dürnrohr (AT) – Slavětice (CZ) 81 Anja Manoutschehri: Railway tracks as green infrastructure – biotope assessments on five train lines in Lower Austria 84 Judith Scherrer: Green infrastructure along bicycle routes: a benefit for cycling tourism and nature conservation 87 Maria Quarta: Green Infrastructure for better living: The LOS_DAMA!* project approach 93 Serena D’Ambrogi: Communicating green infrastructure: the Italian experience of RETICULA 99 Picture credits 102 Editorial Elmar Csaplovics, Project Director MaGICLandscapes, Technische Universität Dresden | [email protected] Ipsa quoque inmunis rastroque intacta nec ullis saucia vomeribus per se dabat omnia tellus, contentique cibis nullo cogente creatis arbuteos fetus montanaque fraga legebant cornaque et in duris haerentia mora rubetis et quae deciderant patula Iovis arbore glandes. The teeming Earth, yet guiltless of the plough, And unprovok’d, did fruitful stores allow: Content with food, which Nature freely bred, On wildings and on strawberries they fed; Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest, And falling acorns furnish’d out a feast. Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in Fifteen Books, Translated by the Most Eminent Hands [Dryden, Garth, Pope et al.], ed. Sir Samuel Garth. Tonson, London, 1717, Book I (transl. J. Dryden), pp. 101-106 “Europe’s landscapes have faced more habitat loss and safeguard green infrastructure still significantly lag behind fragmentation than any other continent. This is a major the overall pressure of environmentally-unfriendly economic problem for biodiversity.” This concise statement introduces development. The vulnerability of the soil-vegetation a précis of the threats to green infrastructure and of the balance is underlined by the fact that the soils of the EU- efforts of the European Commission to “develop a strategy 27 member states store an estimated amount of between for an EU-wide Green Infrastructure as part of its post-2010 73 and 79 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to about 50 biodiversity policy” (European Commission 2010, p. 1). Major times the annual greenhouse gas emissions from the EU, and concerns focussed on safeguarding three essential qualities that ongoing intensification of agricultural production and of (European) green infrastructure understood in its broadest sealing of high-quality arable soils is inevitably leading to a sense as the entirety of green space from core zones of continuous decline of soil organic (FAO & ITPS (eds) 2015, p. national parks to patches of peri-urban ruderal areas, 340). explicitly connectivity, (landscape) permeability and multi- functionality. It is also essential to distinguish between the quantitative term “greenness” as such and the quality of the respectively In March 2010 the European Council of Ministers agreed related green infrastructure. Far too large is the amount of upon a new EU target for the protection of biodiversity in green space in urban and peri-urban areas - and increasingly 2020, “The EU intends to halt the loss of biodiversity and in rural settlements - due to the fast growing developing the degradation of ecosystem services in the EU by 2020, areas comprising those ugly standardised plots of monotonous restore them in so far as feasible, while stepping up the EU “house gardens”, or “suburban lawns” in the two kinds of contribution to averting global biodiversity loss” (European meanings - which are purely monocultural, dominated by Commission 2010, p. 4). all too frequently mown lawns often fenced in by uniform Thuja hedges, lacking any species-rich spots of at least some It was and is always crucial to verify political announcements biodiversity. Also in the valuable rural cultural landscapes in general and in environmental and conservational issues of Central Europe these fringes surrounding the historic in particular a decade or more after these statements have hearts of the villages/towns were over centuries covered been published. with meadow orchards and household gardens providing an When taking into account that - just as an example among exhausting biodiversity of grass species, herbs, vegetables many others – based on numbers published by the Austrian and fruit trees and have been/are extensively destroyed by Federal Office of Metrology and Surveying (BEV) and Statistics disastrous area zoning plans developed and enforced under Austria from 1985 to 2018 a population growth of 16 % is the destructive influence of the construction industry. confronted with an increase of sealed surfaces of 67 %, with The same danger of misinterpretation holds true for green an only marginal flattening of the gradient of increase in infrastructure related to “extensive” grazing lands in rural the period 2010 to 2018, it becomes evident that efforts to landscapes which are far too often degraded by additional 4 | Editorial fertilisation and sowing of fast-growing red clover and the obvious that such holistic initiatives are still underrepresented like, thus leaving behind extremely species-poor grasslands and their impact beyond the runtime of similar projects in blanketing increasingly over-fertilised soils. the real-world context is poor. It is a matter of fact that apart from the disturbing impact Mankind is corruptible if it comes to deciding between on open landscapes by the steady growth of transport living in non-reflective irresponsibility (shaped by the infrastructure construction (landscape fragmentation) it misunderstanding of freedom as the “right of unlimited is mainly urbanisation which significantly contributes to individual consumption”) and standing against ecologically/ both the loss of green infrastructure and soil surfaces by a environmentally harmful behaviours both at the level of “decoupled land take”. “Since the mid-1950s, the surface the local/regional environment as well as of the sphere of area of cities in the EU has increased by 78 %, even though the individual living space, thus taking self-responsibility the population has grown by only 33 %.” (European Union (ed) in protecting nature in general and green infrastructure 2019, p. 9). particularly. However, positive steps have also been set. It can be argued