engleski

Structural vocabulary of cultural landscape on the island Krk

In the course of centuries a complex typology of cultural landscapes has evolved on the island Krk. An interaction of natural conditions (geology, relief, water regime, climate and soil) on the one hand and the agricultural technologies on the other, has generated specific structural features in rural landscapes. Since this is a karst area, the major factors in shaping of the typological diversity were various karst phenomena, such as sink-holes, dolines, karst fields and dry valleys. It is these structures that make the basis for a morphological vocabulary of cultural landscape on Krk. Recently, Karst areas are more and more subject to far-reaching structural changes that are triggered by socio&#8211 ; economic processes largely due to the globalisation. In this phenomenology, the abandonment of agricultural land-use constitutes the core of the problem. Agriculture is no longer the main factor that articulates the manifold patterns of the cultural landscape. Rural lands are left to spontaneous afforestation or taken over by urbanisation. All this leads to a loss of invaluable cultural heritage and of both, regional and local identities. As an obvious physical deterioration, these transformations inevitably mean a loss of typical Mediterranean landscape patterns. This at the same time implies also a reduction of the structural vocabulary in karst landscapes. The main objective of this paper is to present the landscape typology which should enable an identification of the vocabulary inherent in the cultural landscapes of the Karst region. Parallel to this procedure an effort was made towards landscape evaluation resulting in a hierarchy of cultural landscapes. The latter can be used as an important instrument for protection and revitalisation of valuable landscape areas on the island.

karst; cultural landscape; typology; structural vocabulary; landscape protedtion; revitalisation

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