Measures of territorial stability of the agricultural landscape

The fundamental objective of the paper is to determine the whole surface covering index of the landscape ecological quality on the basis of more or less stable indices permanently present in the landscape, namely depending on the ecological quality of elements of the current landscape structure, their spatial arrangement and area. The afore-mentioned methodological theses may be implemented in different ways. This part of paper concentrates on integral surface indices, i.e. indices covering the entire Slovak territory. For this purpose it has selected those comparatively stable indices which at the Slovak level would present the most general characteristics of the ecological state of our present landscape structure. For evaluation it uses a structure coefficient and fragment coefficient. The structure coefficient reflects the mutual ratio of negative and positive landscape-forming elements. The afore-mentioned considerations of the landscape-ecological significance of elements indicate that ecosystems corresponding to natural conditions are viewed as positive landscape-forming elements, namely forest stands, permanent grass stands, natural streams and public greenery areas. Among the negative landscape-forming elements are seminatural and artifical areas, namely arable soil, extraction areas, built-up areas, city dumps, etc. These seminatural and artificial landscape elements represent highly sensitive landscape components whose ecological instability increases proportionally to their size, yet, these elements are indispensable for the life of society. The fragment coefficient evaluates the largeness-structure of the agricultural soil on an ecological basis. The procedure is applicable for the needs of territorial-economic planning as follows: it indicates spatial differentiation of the landscape structure impairment and from it ensues a differentiated approach to economic development of the settlement, determining the K sub(s) limit value enables us to obtain detailed information on the need for a change of a cadastral territory land utilization structure (what type of a stabilizing element should be implemented and what should be the territory size)