MANAGEMENT OF SEMI-WILD LARGE HERBIVORES’ GRAZING SITES IN LATVIA
Large herbivores were a common part of European nature in the pre-agrarian times. With the development of farming and over-hunting, the number of wild large herbivores rapidly decreased. Wild horses and cattle became extinct. In the 1920-30’s, scientists created two new herbivore breeds that resembled the extinct aurochs and tarpans - Heck cattle and Konik horses. Nowadays the introduction of Heck cattle, Konik horses and other similar large herbivore breeds is widely used in specially protected nature territories (SPNT) as a strategic answer to the question – what should we do with the agricultural lands that have lost their economical meaning. Since 1999, semi-wild large herbivores are in…
ASSESSMENT OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES FOR PLANNING OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE AT THE REGIONAL LEVEL
Ecosystem services (ES) are defined as the benefits that human beings derive from ecosystem functions. Assessment and mapping of these benefits are crucial for sustainable environmental planning and future natural capital. Green infrastructure (GI) is natural or semi-natural territories that provide wide range of ES. Human affected ecosystems tend to fail to provide certain sets of ES due to the trade-offs among those services, which could be mitigated through implementation of GI. Mapping of ES, as well as assessing the interactions among various ES and analysing their supply potential’s cold/hot spots considerably enhances and substantiates the planning process of GI, particularly at the …
Landscape 100: How Finland, Estonia and Latvia Used Landscape in Celebrating their Centenary Anniversaries
Abstract In the aftermath of what was then the Great War several European countries like Finland, Estonia and Latvia gained independence, marking their centenary jubilees 2017–2018. This paper observes how landscapes were used in anniversary celebrations and what historical themes were foregrounded and which omitted, revealing how collective historical commemoration in landscape enacts within national identity framework depending also on how landscape is understood in each respective country.
Path dependence and landscape: initial conditions, contingency and sequences of events in latgale, latvia
AbstractThe notion of path dependence has not yet been well explored as a tool for analysing landscape change. Within geography it is primarily economic geographers who have, up until now, shown a keen interest in this concept which stresses the role of social agency and institutions in understanding the development trajectories of regions. Further, the notion of path dependence usefully captures the idea of contingency in historical sequences. This article presents such a perspective on landscape change analysis, discussing two dominant types of sequences in path‐dependent systems. Self‐reinforcing sequences characterize the formation and long‐term reproduction of a given institutional pat…
Towards (dis)continuity of agricultural wetlands: Latvia’s polder landscapes after Soviet productivism
The concepts of agricultural regimes in advanced economies, such as productivism or non/neo/post-productivism, have been critically debated over the last decades to understand the transition and diversity of modern agriculture. We explore these concepts to understand the environmentally vulnerable landscape of agricultural wetlands in Latvia that, during the era of Soviet high modernism (productivist agricultural regime), have been converted into polders as part of a mass drainage movement. Today, these post-Soviet agro-polders can be characterised as antipodes in relation to integrity of heritage, ecology and the socio-economics of agricultural concerns. Building on case studies, wider pol…
“Nature caprices are finally defeated!”: reclamation politics and practices in Latvia during the era of modernism
Soviet agro-polders, as ideological and highly technological assemblies, were among the first ones to signify the productivism era in the rural landscape of the Baltic republics and the modernisation of Soviet agriculture there. At the time of autocratic reigning of productivist ideas, polders were a testimony to productivity – the means to disband with the unproductive past and demonstrate the Soviet Union’s scientific and technological supremacy over the traditional ways of managing the wetlands. The establishment of polders took place during two different periods of Soviet agricultural developments. The first phase occurred as part of Khrushchev’s reforms, whereas the second was implemen…
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