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Various ice bodies are an important source of paleoenvironmental data, and their study improves the understanding of present and future environmental conditions. Their changes are an important indicator of climate change. This special issue of Acta geographica Slovenica draws attention to the changing and disappearing cryosphere across the globe, with an emphasis on the southeastern Alps, and the necessity to conduct research in this field before the ice disappears forever. This paper briefly summarizes the current body of knowledge on glaciers, permafrost, cave ice, lake and river ice, and snow in the southeastern Alps, and it presents the contribution of Acta geographica Slovenica to this research and the main highlights of all five papers included in this special issue.

Increasingly severe weather extremes are predicted as one of the consequences of climate change. According to climatic models, weather extremities induce higher risks for both flood and drought in the Carpathian Basin. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, flood control relied on cost-intensive engineering structures, but recently ecological solutions have come to the fore. Flood hazard on major rivers could be mitigated if multiple and cumulative water retention opportunities are exploited on the upper sections of tributary catchments. Appropriate land use and landscape pattern changes can shift the infiltration to run-off ratio to the benefit of the former. In the Transdanubian Hills of Southwest Hungary three study areas with different agricultural land use types had been selected and investigated for the impact of landscape micro-features on soil moisture retention capacity with the purpose of conserving water from wet periods for the times of drought. Marked differences in moisture dynamics have been detected between arable land, grasslands and orchards. This fact underlines the need for integrated soil and water conservation. Drought risk was found to be the highest on ploughland. Favourable soil water budgets have been observed in the fields as a function of land use: less intensive types, like grazing land and orchards (particularly tree rows), were identified as places of high water retention capacity. Although serious water stress conditions were also reached in the orchard, it markedly mitigated drought conditions compared to the ploughland.

Acta geographica Slovenica je znanstvena revija za vsa področja geografije in sorodnih ved. Izdaja jo Geografski inštitut Antona Melika ZRC SAZU, zalaga Založba ZRC in sozalaga Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti. Med letoma 1952 in 1976 je revija izhajala občasno, nato enkrat letno, od leta 2003 dvakrat letno, od leta 2019 pa izhaja trikrat letno. Od leta 1995 revija izhaja tudi na spletu. Od leta 1981 je revija vključena v Scopus, od leta 2003 pa v Web of Science. Je med najbolj citiranimi slovenskimi znanstvenimi revijami v tujini. Leta 2020 je izšel njen šestdeseti letnik in tej obletnici je posvečen ta prispevek. // Acta geographica Slovenica is a scientific journal for papers covering all fields of geography and related disciplines. It is issued by the ZRC SAZU Anton Melik Geographical Institute, published by Založba ZRC, and co-published by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. From 1952 to 1976, the journal was published periodically, then once a year, twice a year from 2003, and three times a year since 2019. The online version of the journal has been available since 1995. The journal has been included in Scopus since 1981 and in Web of Science since 2003. It is one of the Slovenian scholarly journals most cited abroad. The 60th volume was published in 2020 and this article is dedicated to the milestone anniversary.

One of the methods of water resource management is to construct small retention ponds. Within the framework of the “Possible ecological control of flood hazard in the hilly regions of Hungary and Slovenia“ project the management of small ponds and their impact on flood prevention were studied in selected catchments. Data on pond management were gathered from interviews with pond owners. In a pilot study, we conducted an inventarisation and classification of all retention ponds. Primarily they were constructed for more specific use: fishing, irrigation, watering livestock. These functions have been gradually replaced by leisure-time activities, aesthetics, and tourism. Spring, stream and rainfall-fed ponds prevail in the pilot area and reduce the flood risk. Due to the increased variability of precipitation patterns ponds are also becoming an important measure to limit drought consequences at a local level.

Field mapping is an accurate but also time consuming method of detailed mapping of habitat types. Levels of habitat types are usually hierarchically nested at several levels. Our main research question therefore is: ‘How detailed can be modelling of habitat types with decision trees and digital data in karst landscape?’ Similar to studies in other (non-karst) environments we explored the basic properties of the habitats in Dinaric Karst study region (Classical Karst in Southwest Slovenia) and tested modelling of habitat types at three different levels of detail. To seek for the best set of predictor variables we used Rapid-Eye satellite images, airborne images and digital elevation model. We prepared more than 60 explanatory variables and divided habitat polygons into training and testing samples to validate the results. The results proved that modelling with decision trees in Dinaric Karst landscape does not result in high accuracy at high detailed levels. Due to the presence of mine fields in the large area of Dinaric Karst (e.g. in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) the field mapping in this area is difficult therefore the findings from this study can be used for further development of mapping through remote sensing.

Landscape researchers have described different options for landscape classifications and have suggested the approximate size of landscape units for various scale levels of study and the most suitable data layers (representing biophysical characteristics) for differentiating them. The literature already contains examples of evaluating data layers with regard to their information value, their correlation with one another, and so on, but less research has been done on the suitability of data layers from the perspective of the scale of landscape research. The objective of this paper is to propose a quantitative method to assess different data layers by landscape classification scale. The proposed method is based on systematic sequential multilevel division of the study area, calculating the average moderate coefficient of variation for each scale level, and comparing calculations between scale levels. It can be used to objectively determine which raster data layers are more suitable for defining large landscape units and which are more suitable for defining small ones. We tested the method for Slovenia, a small country at the junction of the Alps, Pannonian Basin, Mediterranean, and Dinaric Alps with a high landscape diversity. To test the method, we systematically divided the country into smaller units using ten differently structured grids (for the case of Slovenia, we used squares with a baseline of 1, 10, 20 km, and so on up to 100 km). For each data layer, we calculated the average moderate coefficient of variation for each division and compared it with the average coefficient of variation for the highest level, which represented the country as one whole unit. The ratios allowed us to classify the data layers into categories and assess which data layers are more important in landscape classification at a small scale, which ones are more important at a large scale, and which ones function as noise. As expected, variation diminishes with a smaller baseline in all cases, but the gradient of decreasing variation is different. We also studied the categorization of data layers using a hierarchical classification method. Following to the proposed method, it is possible to create various categories of data layers by the landscape classification scale for a certain area. The method can be used for any area and is an option for reducing subjectivity in selecting data layers for landscape analysis classification for the most general purposes (e.g., production of landscape classifications for education).

With supervised classification methods, we can determine classification rules for landscape types of existing landscape typologies. In this article, we analyse whether supervised classification methods could also define adequate rules for landscape types determination in the case of poorly designed typologies. We tried to model two Slovenian intentionally distorted natural landscape typologies. We noted that due to the incongruity of the distorted typologies, decision tree methods were not capable of forming rules for determination of landscape types. Although we did manage to create modelled distorted typologies with minimum distance to means method, maximum likelihood method, and k -nearest neighbours method, they matched the basic distorted typology only slightly. Z metodami nadzorovane klasifikacije lahko za obstojece naravnopokrajinske tipizacije dolocimo klasifikacijska pravila za posamezne pokrajinske tipe. V prispevku razpravljamo, ali bi tudi v primeru zelo slabo zasnovanih tipizacij z metodami nadzorovane klasifikacije lahko izdelali dovolj natancna pravila za dolocanje pokrajinskih tipov. Poskusili smo modelirati dve namenoma popaceni naravnopokrajinski tipizaciji Slovenije. Opazili smo, da zaradi nesmiselnosti popacenih tipizacij metode odlocitvenih dreves sploh niso bile sposobne izdelati pravil za dolocanje pokrajinskih tipov. Z metodami najmanjse razdalje, najvecje verjetnosti in k najbližjih sosedov pa smo sicer uspeli izdelati modelirane popacene tipizacije, a so se te z osnovno popaceno tipizacijo le malo ujemale.

Cultivated terraces distinctively mark the landscape and are a result of human adaptation to steep areas. Terraces were studied with regard to their morphometric qualities, ownership structure, and land use at eight pilot sites in various landscape types in Slovenia. Twenty-six detailed interviews were carried out with local residents and experts. In current agricultural practice, terraces mostly represent obstacles, and for owners they create a loss rather than profit; however, they represented an advantage in the past, when they were cultivated manually. Land use is intensifying on economically profitable terraces. Among those examined, the Jeruzalem terraces stand out because these are the youngest ones (created in socialist Yugoslavia around 1965). Because of their aesthetic value, they are the best known among the public. Profitability in particular will be an important driving force for the future maintenance of terraces.

Based on digital data on relief, rock, and vegetation, the most significant elements of the internal structure of Slovenian landscapes, and their external appearance, a geographic information system was used to calculate landscape diversity of Slovenia. Areas with high landscape diversity are landscape hotspots, and areas with low landscape diversity are landscape coldspots. One-tenth of Slovenia with the highest landscape diversity was defined as landscape hotspots, and one-tenth of Slovenia with the lowest landscape diversity was defined as landscape coldspots. Most landscape hotspots are located in the Alpine part of Slovenia (more than two-thirds of their total area), and most landscape coldspots in the Dinaric part of Slovenia (almost half of their total area).