Search Results (8)

This article addresses the issue of historical heritage revitalization using the example of a tavern. The concept presented in this study constitutes an attempt to establish a connection between the community’s tangible historical legacy and the green space that both highlights and reinforces its significance. The Tatary district in Lublin includes areas along Mełgiewska Street, Zadębie III, and the village of Hajdów. It is a residential and industrial district with landmarks such as the Graff Manor and the Krauze Brothers’ Mill. Since the Middle Ages, a crossing existed here at the narrowing of the Bystrzyca River valley, where major communication routes from Lithuania to Łęczna and from Ruthenia to Mełgiew intersected. Located in this area, the Red Inn has one of the oldest culinary traditions in Lublin, dating back to the 16th century. The building is listed in the register of monuments under number A/268. The revitalization of this currently non-operational inn should focus on restoring the building to preserve its original character and historical value while adapting it to modern standards. The inn and its surroundings have been subjected to field analyses on multiple research levels, culminating in a land development project. A key element of the plantings here are native species that support biodiversity. Full article

The first systematic attempts to straighten the River Inn in Tyrol for shipping and land reclamation date back to the middle of the 18th century. A dedicated hydraulic engineering authority—the so-called Main Ark Inspection—was established to realize this challenging task. The one-man authority was unable to straighten the Alpine river through the period of its existence up to 1792. The reasons for this were by no means related to a lack of technical resources and knowledge. On the contrary, a micro- and environmental-historical analysis of the attempts to straighten the River Inn highlights the complexity of the causes, which were mutually reinforcing and multifactorial. In this paper, four key causes are examined in more detail: (1) the social organization of water engineering, (2) social conflicts between riparian communities among themselves and with the hydraulic engineering authority, (3) conflicts between Tyrol and Bavaria at the wet border downstream of Kufstein, and (4) increased bedload discharge into the main river by tributaries. To illustrate the causes mentioned above, historical river maps are analyzed in great detail, drawing on contemporaneous written sources. The approach thereby highlights the overall complexity of pre-modern hydraulic engineering in all its facets, be they social, technical, natural, administrative, or organizational. To conclude, the results of this environmental history research are embedded and discussed in the context of integrated river management in the Anthropocene. Full article

Understanding the spatiotemporal patterns and key determinants of rural homestay industry agglomeration is crucial for the well-planning and well-management of rural tourism during the process of rural revitalization in China. By employing multi geospatial datasets, this study investigated the long-term spatiotemporal patterns and their key determinants of homestay inns during the period 2004–2019 in Moganshan, a well-known rural tourism destination in Zhejiang Province, China. The kernel density estimation and spatial autocorrelation were integrated to identify the hotspots of rural homestay inns at a fine scale. The key determinants were further uncovered using multiple stepwise regression and logistic regression models. The result shows that the overall growth of homestay inns was slow at the early stage and has progressed rapidly since 2014, with 94.2% of homestay inns newly opened during the period 2014–2019. The first hotspot was located in Moganshan National Park and then spread to the surrounding villages. Three hotspot zones have emerged, including the northern hotspot zone (Sihe-Xiantan), central hotspot zone (Houwu-Park-Liaoyuan), and southern hotspot zone (Ziling-Laoling-Lanshukeng) by 2019. The modeling indicates that government policy was an essential determinant for the increase in homestay inns, followed by entrepreneurship and investment. The new homestay inns were more likely to occur in settlements close to scenic spots, river networks, and cultivated land. Abundant scenic spots and heterogeneous landscapes were also preferred when selecting sites and executing landscape design for homestay inns. Our empirical study has provided practical insights for policy makers, entrepreneurs, and planners for future sustainable homestay industry development. Full article

For Europe, a reduction of 80% of the potential storage volume due to reservoir sedimentation is predicted by 2080. Sedimentation processes trigger the decrease of the storage volume and a related restriction in hydropower production. Further, the artificial downstream flushing of deposited fines has manifold effects on the aquatic ecology, including changes in morphology and sediment quality, as well as increased turbidity and subsequent stress for aquatic species. However, it is common to lower the water surface of reservoirs for technical inspections, which is not comparable to reservoir flushing operations. The presented case study deals with such a controlled drawdown beyond the operational level of the Gepatsch reservoir (Tyrol, Austria). Based on the awareness of possible ecological consequences, an advanced set of measures and an integrative monitoring design, consisting of a detailed event-based quantification of suspended sediments, changes in the morphology, especially with respect to fine sediments, and analyses of the biological quality element fish on the reach scale along the Inn River have been developed. Full article

The spatial distribution of fish upstream of a vertical trash rack was investigated at the hydropower plant Kirchbichl in the alpine River Inn (Tyrol, Austria). The objective of the research project “FIDET” was to establish a non-invasive methodology to study fish presence and flow characteristics at large hydro power sites. A new monitoring approach was developed combining hydroacoustic observations of fish locations with multivariate hydrodynamic data. This was accomplished by utilizing complementary observations from multiple underwater sensor technologies: First, an array of echosounders were deployed at a fixed cross-section upstream of the trash rack for long-term monitoring. Afterwards, detailed underwater surveys with “acoustic cameras” (DIDSON and ARIS) revealed that the spatial distributions of fish in front of the trash rack were highly heterogeneous. The spatial distribution of the flow field was assessed via the time-averaged velocity fields from acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP). Finally, a custom pressure-based flow turbulence probe was developed, providing spatial estimates of flow turbulence immediately upstream of the trash rack. The significant contribution of this work is to provide a multi-modal monitoring approach incorporating both fish position data and hydrodynamic information. This forms the starting point for a future objective, namely to create an automated, sonar-based detection and control systems to assist and monitor fish protection operations in near real-time. Full article

The homestay business has contributed to the development of the tourism industry, and it has revitalized tourism resources and boosted the tourism economy. This article takes the Mogan Mountain homestay agglomeration of Yangtze River Delta, the most developed and actively invested in business in the industry, as a research site focus to discuss the recent trends in the Chinese homestay business. Standard deviational ellipse analysis, spatial analysis of nearest-neighbor, and density are empirically tested with the data from the inn/homestay channel of Qunar.com, which is a widely acclaimed website with high page views. Based on the above researches, this paper uses the standard deviation ellipse analysis, the nearest neighbor analysis, and the kernel density estimation analysis method to explore the development characteristics of the Mogan Mountain homestay agglomeration. Combined with the Butler tourist destination life cycle model, it can be concluded that the Mogan Mountain homestay agglomeration area experienced a stage of initial development (2007–2011) and rapid development (2012–2015) and now is in a mature development stage (2016 up to now). This study proposes five actors: physical geographical conditions, traffic location conditions, tourism self-organization mechanism, policy influence, and community residents’ willingness to develop and significantly drive the evolution of Mogan Mountain homestay agglomeration. The formation and evolution of the Mogan Mountain homestay agglomeration are the results of the accumulation of resource-driven effect, scale effect, and differentiation effect at different stages. The unique organization and incentive mechanism promote regional sustainable development. Full article

The hydrologic response of a river basin pertains to how precipitation is partitioned into streamflow, evapotranspiration, and infiltration. The reliability of all these components is essential for the sustainable use of water resources. This paper seeks to understand if the prediction of the main components of the water balance from the SWAT model can be controlled and interpreted by a simple Darwinian approach: the Budyko framework. The Danube Basin was selected to assess the SWAT model green (evapotranspiration) and blue water fluxes (water yield or water that runs off the landscape into rivers) in a diagnostic approach based on two mono-parametric Budyko curve-type equations. This analysis was conducted comparing the evaporative index (EI) and the base flow index (BFI) predicted by Budyko’s equations based on observed data from 418 gauging stations with those simulated by SWAT. The study demonstrated that SWAT evapotranspiration estimations were in good agreement with those of the Budyko curves, whereas SWAT baseflow underestimated the Inn and Austrian Danube regions. The analysis of the Budyko equations in each water management region of the Danube provided a pioneering understanding of the relationship between EI and BFI in the study area, leading to an improvement of the hydrological simulations and providing a more reliable water balance in each water management region. Full article

The Joint Danube Survey 3, carried out in 2013 was the world’s biggest river research expedition of its kind. The course of the second largest river of Europe passes large cities like Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade and is fed from many tributaries like Inn, Thisza, Drava, Prut, Siret and Argeș. During the 6 weeks of shipping the 2375 km downstream the River Danube from Germany to the Black Sea an enormous number of water samples were analyzed and collected. A wide spectrum of scientific disciplines cooperated in analyzing the River Danube waters. For toxicological analysis, water samples were collected on the left, in the middle, and on the right side of the river at 68 JDS3 sampling points and frozen until the end of the Danube survey. All samples were analyzed with two in vitro bioassays tests (umuC and MTS). Testing umuC without S9 activation and MTS test did not show positive signals. But umuC investigations of the water samples came up with toxic signals on two stretches, when activated with S9 enzymes. The override of the limiting value of the umuC investigation with prior S9 activation started downstream Vienna (Austria) and was prolonged until Dunaföldvar (Hungary). This stretch of the River Danube passes a region that is highly industrialized, intensively used for agricultural purposes and also highly populated (Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest). The elevated values may indicate these influences. Full article