Human impact in the Tatra Mountains

Abstract

Human activity is one of the three main drivers of environmental changes in the mountains. Its influence on mountain natural environment is characterized by great spatiotemporal diversity. In the Tatras human impact started in the 12th-13th centuries and was related to mining and animal grazing, followed by metallurgy in the 18th century. These activities developed in the 15th-16th and with the climax in the 18th-19th, except for the animal grazing which continued till the 1960s-1970s. Since the second half of the 19th century tourism developed intensively. More than 3 million people per year visit the Polish part of the Tatras nowadays. Human activities, prior to tourism, were accompanied by a strong forest and dwarf pine shrubs extraction. They affected mainly relief and vegetation cover. Erosion in the slopes was triggered or intensified after deterioration of vegetation cover by grazing. Anthropogenic landforms like pits, mine roads, mine channels are still recognizable in landscape. Lowering of the upper forest and dwarf pine limits and changing of a natural structure of the forest into a monoculture are among the main influences on vegetation. Indirect effects of the changed forest structure are problems with bark beetles and windthrows. The later have been strongly affecting slope morphodynamics. Tourism-related impact manifest in gradual anthropogenic erosion along hiking trails. It is the major type of human impact n the Tatras now. The historical human impact until the 1960s-1970s was indeed spatial in nature. Currently, it is of a linear character or point-focused, and is relatively constant regarding particular locations.

Keywords

• human impact
• tatra mountains
• mining
• metallurgy
• pasturage
• deforestation
• tourism
• landform
• vegetation cover
• water resources