- Biogeography (19)
- Climatology (36)
- Environment (76)
- Geomorphology (57)
- GIS and Remote Sensing (18)
- Human and economic geography (62)
- Hydrology (54)
- Regional geography (45)
- Tourism (42)
- Various (33)
Geographical studies and environment protection research
Subjects
Volume IX | Issue 9
Characteristics of the Industrialization Process Around the Moment of Collapse of a Centralized Political System. Romania as a Case Study
Abstract: Although a country with a relatively small area, Romania has a variety of natural resources, which in time were favourable prerequisites to the development of processing activities. Most of these resources are not able to provide entirely the requisite, but cover parts of it in certain proportions. The territorial distribution of natural resources and the different cultural influences have fostered the development of certain regions or industrial centres of the country. The dynamics of the industrial exploitation of these centres has grown continuously, reaching a paroxysm in the centralised regime, when some of the resources have been largely exhausted. Rapid and often risky industrialisation, relying mainly on the basis of propaganda and not of economic efficiency has led to a falsely balanced development. New industrial structure, both territorial as well as sectorial has proven ineffective in the very first year of transition from the centralised system to the market economy.
Keywords: Romania, industrialisation process, communist regime collapse, very early transition period
Full article Dates:
Printed: 01-11-2010 Online: 21-11-2010
Affiliations:
- 1 Interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Researches on the Territorial Dynamics, University of Bucharest
Citation:
Acknowledgements:
This work was supported by CNCSIS – UEFISCSU, project number PNII – IDEI code 1948/2008 and project number PNII - IDEI code 196/2007.
Copyright:
© 2010 The Author(s). Published by Forum geografic.
Provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.
Open Access article.
Provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.
Open Access article.
Volume IX | Issue 9
The Use of the Digital Terrain Model in Analyzing the Natural Potential of the Muntele Mic – Poiana Mărului – Ţarcu Mountains Tourist Area to Extend and Plan the Ski Domain
Abstract: The present study aims at examining the natural potential of the region as a prerequisite for the planning and the expansion of the ski domain, in order to reinvigorate the resorts Muntele Mic and Poiana Mărului. The factors taken into account to identify the best areas for planning new ski tracks are: the altitude, the slope, the orientation of the slopes to the solar radiation, the duration and the thickness of the snow layer, the land use, the risk of snow avalanches occurrence and the degree of accessibility. Because the factors considered don’t have the same importance for the favorability, before the combination of the factors, we used the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) implemented by the IDRISI Andes software to assign for each factor a relative weight to use in the analysis. The risk of snow avalanches occurrence was considered as restrictive factor (Boolean factor). The combination of factors by Weight of Evidence method resulted in the creation of the final model, which presents the probability map for new ski tracks. The probability degree varies continuously in space, from a very high probability (255) to a very low probability (0) depending on the combination mode in a certain area of the considered factors and their weight. We considered as optimal areas only the areas with values above 200. The best areas to expand the ski domain are the detached secondary peaks of Muntele Mic towards north and the northern slopes of the Nedeia Ridge. These areas could allow for the development of certain ski tracks at least the same size as the ones of the Prahova Valley. The development of the ski domain in these areas will connect the two resorts, Muntele Mic and Poiana Mărului, and could increase the touristic potential of the study area.
Keywords: GIS, ski areas, Digital Terrain Model (DTM), spatial analysis, Muntele Mic, Poiana Mărului, Țarcu Mountains
Full article Dates:
Printed: 01-11-2010 Online: 21-11-2010
Affiliations:
Corresponding author:
Citation:
Acknowledgements:
This work was supported by CNCSIS–UEFISCSU, project number PNII–IDEI 1075/2009 and by CNCSIS–UEFISCSU, project number PNII–IDEI 1066/2009.
Copyright:
© 2010 The Author(s). Published by Forum geografic.
Provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.
Open Access article.
Provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.
Open Access article.
Volume IX | Issue 9
Social Vulnerability and Risks Associated to the Balkan Endemic Nephropathy in Mehedinţi County
Abstract: The Balkan Endemic Nephropathy (BEN), commonly known as “the dry kidney disease”, was observed for the first time in 1957 in Ergheviţa village from Mehedinţi County. Although, the phenomenon was mainly studied by doctors for a period of approximately 50 years, the number of cases increased, but the actual cause of the disease was not discovered yet. Among the mainly incriminated elements, there is to be mentioned the underground water that crosses through the coal deposit located in the Huşnicioara mines. It is important to notice the fact that this disease affects only the rural space, most of the effective areas of the disease being concentrated around the urban centres like Drobeta Turnu-Severin, Baia de Aramă, Strehaia and Vânju Mare. The respective rural communities are considered to be truly vulnerable to the poor quality of underground waters. Given the fact that new cases of nephropathy are continuously discovered, one of the hypothesis is that the risk induced by the pollution of underground water layers is significant and that the human communities are highly vulnerable to this element.The present study identifies the actual status regarding the symptoms and the extension of the disease, as well as the economical-social circumstances that favour the occurrence of the cases, representing a strong signal concerning the human communities vulnerable to the pollution of a natural resource that is indispensable to human life – water.
Keywords: Balkan endemic nephropathy, social vulnerability, coal deposits, quality of underground water layers, rural community, social isolation
Full article Dates:
Printed: 01-11-2010 Online: 21-11-2010
Affiliations:
- 1 Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Geography, University of Craiova, 13 Al. I. Cuza Street, Craiova, Romania
Citation:
Acknowledgements:
The authors would like to kindly acknowledge the county and local institutions that supplied important information from their statistical database, respectively the Mehedinţi County Statistics Office, the Mehedinţi County Public Health Office and the Renamed Medical II Dyalisis and Nephrology Centre, Drobeta Turnu-Severin. Further gratitude goes towards all persons that were willing to participate in the social survey in 2009. The National Council of Scientific Research in Higher Education supported the research in the framework of the RFFI Grant No. 973/2008, the project entitled "Vulnerabilitatea versanţilor la alunecări de teren în Piemontul Bălăciţei. Utilizarea SIG şi realizarea hărtilor digitale ale vulnerabilităţii (Slopes vulnerability to landslides within Balaciţa Piedmont. GIS utilization and achievement of vulnerability digital maps)".
Copyright:
© 2010 The Author(s). Published by Forum geografic.
Provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.
Open Access article.
Provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.
Open Access article.
Volume IX | Issue 9
Responsible Tourism and Tourism Ecology
Abstract: Many efforts have already been made and several ideas have been promoted to solve the problems in the development of socially and economically underprivileged, peripheral areas. Most of the proposals suggest supporting rural tourism and its management based on local natural, cultural, agrarian etc. traditions and help them this way to catch up with the more developed regions of the country. According to our surveys, it can be stated that sustainable and responsible rural tourism development is unbelievable without the application of ecological thinking. Consequently tourism ecology, as theory and practice, naturally helps developing the tourism of rural areas based on local natural, social, and cultural resources. Sustenance of tourism is a double task: we have to provide long-term reservation and guarantee that entrepreneurs’ input of capital will return and their firm’s will better their economic etc. state in the same time. Sustainable tourism has to be endurable and economically executable on long term, but at the same time, it has to be socially and ethically fair in relations to local people. Nevertheless, it is also an expectation that actors of the system, i.e. tourists must continue an active and responsibly sustainable practice (responsible sustainable tourism).
Full article Dates:
Printed: 01-11-2010 Online: 21-11-2010
Affiliations:
Citation:
Copyright:
© 2010 The Author(s). Published by Forum geografic.
Provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.
Open Access article.
Provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.
Open Access article.
Volume VIII | Issue 8
The Semiautomated Identification of the Planation Surfaces on the Basis of the Digital Terrain Model. Case Study: The Mehedinti Mountains (Southern Carpathians)
Abstract: The paper presents a method for the semiautomated classification of the planation surfaces, using the Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and the object-oriented analysis. The effort undergone for developing such a method has a number of motivations. The first one is that these landforms are very important for decoding the geomorphologic evolution of the relief units. The second motivation concerns the fact that their identification and mapping, by using classical means, represents a difficult demarche, which requires a lot of time. Finally, the already-known limits of the relief analysis using the DTM at pixel level impose the testing of an object-oriented analysis, in which the area under study is divided into objects of various dimensions, as homogenous as possible from the viewpoint of one or more properties. The method that we propose supposes the following steps: the realisation of the slope model and of the flow model, starting from the DTM; the division, by segmentation into objects that are as homogenous as possible from the viewpoint of the slope; the classification of the objects into landforms (planation surfaces) by using the fuzzy functions and taking into account more factors simultaneously (the average slope value, the minimum slope value, the flow coefficient and the altitude), and the selection and grouping of the identified surfaces into sculptural complexes. The first stages represent the automated part of the method, while the last one requires a detailed geomorphologic analysis of the area, as well as the validation of the results on the field. The method was firstly developed for the Godeanu Mountains, the map of the levelled surfaces (Niculescu, 1965) being used for the identification of the parameters included in the algorithm, as well as for testing the results obtained in the view of the improvement of the method. Due to the good results thus obtained, the same method was also used for mapping the levelled surfaces in the Mehedinţi Mountains, and, along with the field observations, there was realised the planation surfaces map for this relief unit.
Keywords: planation surfaces, geomorphometry, Digital Terrain Model (DTM), object-based image analysis (OBIA), segmentation, Mehedinți Mountains (Southern Carpathians)
Full article Dates:
Printed: 30-11-2009 Online: 10-12-2009
Affiliations:
Corresponding author:
Citation:
Acknowledgements:
The paper was realized in the framework of the PNCD-I2 1075/2009 Grant - "Metode de analiză geomorfologică digitală şi de clasificare automată a formelor de relief în regiunile montane pe baza modelului numeric al terenului şi prin integrarea datelor de teledetecţie".
Copyright:
© 2009 The Author(s). Published by Forum geografic.
Provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.
Open Access article.
Provided under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.
Open Access article.
Keywords
agriculture
Banat
Bucharest
Bulgaria
climate change
COVID-19
Craiova
cultural tourism
Danube
deindustrialization
demographic decline
drought
Environment
erosion
European Union
flash flood
flood risk
geodiversity
geomorphology
geomorphometry
GIS
human pressure
Hungary
land cover
landscape
land use
morphometry
Oltenia Plain
pollution
precipitation
regional development
remote sensing
Romania
rural-urban fringe
rural area
rural tourism
Serbia
Southern Carpathians
sustainability
sustainable development
tourism
urban development
urban sprawl
urban transport
water pollution
Meta
© 2009- 2026 Forum geografic
Designed by Alin Clincea.