ABIOTICAL CONDITIONING OF THE ANTHROPOPRESSURE ON THE VEGETATION IN THE NAREW RIVER NATIONAL PARK

Bogdan Zagajewski
University of Warsaw, Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, Remote Sensing of Environment Laboratory
Krakowskie Przedmiescie 30, PL – 00-927 Warszawa, Poland
bogdan@uw.edu.pl

ABSTRACT

The increasing anthropopressure on the environment requires the search for advanced and better methods of the environmental protection. The latest computer and management developments and techniques aid basic ecological research and environmental resources surveys. This paper presents the analysis of the environmental media on the intensity of the vegetation transformation. The research area is the Narew River National Park (Polish acronym: NPN) along with the surrounding protective zone, located in the north-east of Poland. The valley of the Narew river is characterised by the dense network of river beds. In the period of spring and summer the flood frequency is high. The consequence is a water-and-swamp setting of the natural environment, with the specific ecological conditioning, different from those prevailing in other river valleys. This leads to a rich mosaic of the ecosystems arosen from the aquatic, aquatic-and-meadow, land-and-swamp, as well as land environments. In 1970s and 1980s an intensive anthropogenic pressure was exerted in the area. Afterwards, economic crisis halted human impact on the environment and finally was followed by advancement of the re-naturalisation works. The National Park has been established due to the fact that the area plays a significant role in the international system of migrations of living organisms. It was also considered an international core area (25/M) in the European programme ECONET. This increased institutional capacity of conducting environmental damage studies and proper environmental monitoring. The Remote Sensing of Environment Laboratory of the Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies of the Warsaw University, having conducted studies related to this area for many years, has gathered a significant volume of data, used to determine the directions of changes taking place in the environment of the NPN.

The scope of the research was organised into the following stages:

1. Analysis of potential, actual and native vegetation maps at the 1:25,000 scale.
2. Creation of vegetation condition map, using colour – infrared aerial photomaps and Landsat TM 5 imagery.
3. Assessment of the condition for each vegetation native group.
4. Selection of the sets of plants related to human activity.
5. Analysis of the abiotical environmental media (morphometry, geomorphology, lithology, soils, groundwater level).
6. Analysis of relations between vegetation and abiotical components.

The fundamental objective of the project was attained, the most important abiotical components for human activity are quality of soils, groundwater level and period of flooding. Human impact on the vegetation of Narew’s valley is low, and the state of the vegetation was assessed to be good. The level of impact on arable lands is average, but still plant condition remains good. The most noticeable damages introduced by the humans were noted within few towns and villages located within the Narew River NP.

Last Update: 2004-2-27