Geografie 1978, 83, 85-90
Impact of Industrial Settlements on Landscape and Environment
The environmental balance is very easy violable and its recovery seems very slow and rather difficult. Till the present day the landscape practically is considered, inspite of this experience, as a potential given by nature and by thousands years of human activity, and its capabilities should be fully exploited. The interaction of landscape and settlements, especially in the case of huge agglomerations represents a very urgent living problem in industrial community of intensively inhabited regions. In principle the function of environment is double and contradictory as a rule. First, it provides to man land, water, minerals, wood, fish, pasture and all other resources necessary for his livelihood. Second, it gives him home, space, natural environment more or less managed by man who cannot exist without them. Unfortunately the utilizing of the usefulness function of environment disturbs its housing function, and, to a smaller extent, on the cotrary too. The mining and manufacturing concentrated in towns and its surroundings is the most important environmental feature in Czechoslovakia. The negative influence of particular plants on the landscape depends on the structure, technology and the capacity of their production. The whole environmental impact is reduced in our classification on land devastation, water contamination and atmosphere pollution. Around 2000 industrial localities are divided into four categories. The relations between the environmental impact and the magnitude of industrial centers indicate that nine geo-ecological types of industrial settlements can be distinguished in the country.
