DOI: 10.11118/978-80-7509-831-3-0418

Using the Knowledge of Written Sources for Nature Conservation and Recreation in the Forests of the Drahany Highlands

Karel Maráz

Drahany Highlands is a landscape with underground caves, dry valleys, depressions and plateaux. This area, inhabited since prehistoric times, has been used economically since the 13th century. Based on the analysis of a wide range of archival sources, the paper presents the historical economic activity of humans in the forests of the Drahany Highlands at three selected sites. The majority of economic activity involved the extraction of timber and other raw materials; for a certain period of time in the Middle Ages the landscape was deforested and used for agriculture. In addition to export, wood was in demand for the processing of other raw materials – glassworks, lime works, iron mills, etc. Information about these, supplemented by knowledge of the boundary stones, ethnographic material, and the everyday life of the local inhabitants, will be used in other fields and will increase the interest of the general public in visiting the sites of former human economic activity. The archival sources testify also to the transformation of the local original diversity of forest species (mainly beeches, oaks, hornbeams, birches, poplars, and firs) into unsuitable 19th century spruce monocultures. This offers an alternative to the return of the original species composition of the Drahany Highlands forests.

Klíčová slova: restoration of the original species diversity of forests, economic and recreational potential of the landscape, anthropogenic activities, leisure activities

stránky: 418-421, Publikováno: 2022, online: 2022