Priority landscapes in Brudzeń Landscape Park conservation plan

Abstract

Abstract The implementation of the European Landscape Convention in Poland requires the identification and landscape assessment in the form of a landscape audit made for each region (voivodeship), as enshrined in the Act on Spatial Planning and Land Development. The Act assumes that as part of landscape audit within regional parks priority landscapes as well as zones of landscape protection will be indicated. There are methodical tools prepared by the Ministry of the Environment to realize both main landscape audit elements – the instruction and the recommendations. Currently (at the end of 2018) no region of the audit is yet to be found, and the newly adopted conservation plans for regional parks enforce, in accordance with the Nature Conservation Act reference to both priority landscapes and zones. This article presents testing of the methodology proposed by the Ministry of the Environment for determining priority landscapes (the instruction) and landscape protection zones (the recommendations). The reference field was the conservation plan for Brudzeń Landscape Park (BLP) located in the Masovian Voivodeship. An attempt to implement particularly the Instructions and identify priority landscapes in the BLP conservation plan proved to be not fully possible. The analyzes carried out in the BLP call for the opinion that apart from the current landscape, it is necessary to take into account other than land use features of the environment that determine the specificity of the landscape – mainly terrain, additionally the catalog of current types of landscapes should be open. Tools prepared by the Ministry of the Environment – still need to be refined.