Podkarpackie/ Scientists to inspect protected landscape areas and write new plans

Scientists from the University of Rzeszów will create new maps and protection plans for the most valuable areas of Podkarpacie nature. They will use GIS technology and artificial intelligence to do this. They have two and a half years to prepare the documents.

About 20 scientists from the Faculty of Technology and Life Sciences and the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Rzeszów will be involved in this. The team consists of landscape architects, specialists in botany, entomology, phytosociology, hydrobiology, ornithology and theriology.

The project will also be overseen by specialists in geographic information systems (GIS), spatial planning and computer science. The collected data will be analyzed by artificial intelligence (AI), which will be used to process large data sets and machine learning.

"This is a huge challenge, there is a lot of work ahead of us. I don't think that anywhere else in the country, on such a scale, in such a large area, similar work has been carried out, hence such a large and substantively diverse team of specialists," said the team leader, Prof. Krzysztof Kukuła from UR.

Protected Landscape Areas (OCHK) are located in 99 Podkarpacie communes and cover almost 470 thousand hectares of land. These are areas with diverse ecosystems, valuable due to their tourist values, they play an important role as ecological corridors, i.e. routes for plants and animals to move between habitats, thus enabling them to survive, despite adverse changes in the environment. These can be, for example, river valleys, forest complexes, hill ranges or peat bogs.

Scientists from UR will update documents concerning all thirteen OCHKs. They will reassess their natural and cultural value, indicate the routes and threats to the patency of ecological corridors, select the most valuable ecosystems, distinctive types of landscapes, as well as areas with the highest tourist and recreational potential.

"Verification of the boundaries of these areas will also be very important. We assume that they may change in both directions, perhaps the area of ​​some areas will decrease, and others will increase," added Prof. Kukuła.

The new documentation will include geographic studies, including digitally available maps. Scientists will use technology that allows for the creation, analysis and interpretation of spatial environmental data. Thanks to GIS, it is possible to monitor changes in the environment, identify threats and precisely mark the boundaries of OCHKs. In turn, artificial intelligence will enable not only the analysis of large data sets, but also the identification of changes in the environment and the optimization of the management of natural resources.

"Updating the OCHK documentation is important for local governments, which will facilitate spatial planning. This, in turn, will allow for establishing transparent rules regarding the possibility of conducting business activity in these areas, which is important for entrepreneurs," emphasizes Andrzej Kulig, director of the Department of Environmental Protection of the Podkarpackie Province Marshal's Office, which organized a tender for new planning documents for protected areas. It was won by the special purpose vehicle Inventur UR.

“The new documentation will precisely determine the state of preservation of the natural, landscape and cultural values ​​of these areas, and will select those most valuable to us,” added Magdalena Radecka-Gibała, head of the department for the protection of biodiversity, nature and landscape at the Marshal’s Office of the Polish State Treasury.

The documentation is to be ready by the end of 2027. It will cost almost PLN 4 million. The Marshal's Office received funding for this project from European Funds for Podkarpacie for the years 2021-2027. (PAP)

Science in Poland

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