A Cultural and Environmental Assessment of a Landscape Archetype with Dispersed Settlements in Čadca Cadastral District, Slovakia

Abstract

Special types of rural settlements in Slovakia, so-called dispersed settlements, are typical of several regions in the country. They are recognized as specific elements in a landscape and have a strong effect on local identity. They are a part of a historical landscape structure, constituting a unique natural and cultural heritage. For this reason, they deserve special attention in planning and management processes. Decision-making processes about the landscape that do not take into consideration that the inherent value of those structures could lead to their irreversible loss. This paper aims at the evaluation of specific landscape elements in the case study area and describes their effect in terms of the sociohistorical, environmental, and visual context and their influence on sustainability. Both cultural and environmental inventories were interpreted in relation to spatiotemporal land cover/use changes. The field inventory and geospatial analysis, using geographic information systems (GIS) tools, resulted in the categorization and evaluation of 63 dispersed settlement units in the study area of Čadca. We propose a management method, giving reasonable detail to proposed incentives, for each dispersed settlement unit category. The proposed methodology is intended to create a classification of the dispersed settlement units from the perspective of landscape archetypes. The cultural and environmental assessment of dispersed settlement units resulted in the definition of indicators signaling the presence of a particular archetype.