Traditional agricultural landscape in Goričko Landscape Park (Slovenia): Distribution and variety of riparian stream corridors and patches

Goričko Landscape Park is a well-preserved example of typical Central-European agricultural landscape. We used modified PHYSIS typology to describe and classify different habitat types (HT), especially the riparian stream corridors and patches (RSCP)-habitats of riparian woody stands occurring outside the closed woodland. The RSCP of Goričko were categorized into 107 HT, which cover 1.35% of the 45,000 ha in Goričko. The ash-alder vegetation is the most widespread riparian HT. For the detailed analysis, we compared two similar areas that differ only in land-use intensity. RSCP showed slightly higher fractal dimension and significantly higher elongation index in more intensified area B. The analysis of RSCP types on these areas showed a shift, accompanying increased agricultural impact, from pure stands to mixed, from trees to scrub, from ash-alder and white willow stands to mixed riverine willow stands. The course of the intensification produced two results: arable HT were united into large, homogeneous polygons, while less usable land was abandoned. We can conclude that some of the landscape characteristics we used can be applied to detect the level of preserved traditional cultural landscape.