Search

Heritage monuments are religious, historical, strategic or civil edifices and could be deteriorated, even damaged due to their exposure to natural and human induced processes. The Roman Edifice with Mosaic (II-IV A.D.), the largest one in Eastern Europe is an ancient civil edifice built on the steep cliff in the western part of Black Sea, Constanța, Romania and being exposed to geomorphological and hydrogeological processes is affected by degradation. The main objective of this paper is to assess the current state of this ancient historical site in relation with the environmental instability in order to offer scientific support for rehabilitation process through interdisciplinary and non-destructive methods. Geophysical methods had been applied to analyze comparatively the spatial variations and flows of groundwater around Roman Mosaic over 10 years. Geomorphological hazards had been inventoried and mapped. The results emphasize the state of degradation of the roman mosaic pavement and ancient walls mainly through high variations of the deposits moisture due to poor maintenance which caused suffusion, slip processes, bring the mosaic into highly vulnerability range. Zoning vulnerability map of the Roman Mosaic environment is a necessary tool for continuously improvement of risk management because emphasize clearly the sectors which still confronting with hazards.

Forests, which are viewed as an important natural resource for humanity, have been constantly threatened with degradation or even extinction since the dawn of the modern period [...]

Evaluating trends in water quality indicators is a crucial issue in integrated water resource management in any country. In this study eight chemical and physical water quality indicators were analysed in seven river profiles in the River Laborec in eastern Slovakia. The analysed water quality parameters were biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), chemical oxygen demand (CODCr), pH, temperature (t), ammonium nitrogen (NH4+-N), nitrite nitrogen (NO2--N), nitrate nitrogen (NO3--N), and total phosphorus (TP). Data from the monitored indicators were provided by the Ko�ice branch of the Slovakian Water Management Company, over a period of 15 years from 1999 to 2013. Mann�Kendall non-parametric statistical test was used for the trend analysis. Biochemical and chemical oxygen demand, ammonium and nitrite nitrogen content exhibit decreasing trends in the River Laborec. Decreasing agricultural activity in the area has had a significant impact on the trends in these parameters. However, NO2--N was the significant parameter of water quality because it mostly exceeds the limit value set in Slovak legislation, Regulation No. 269/2010 Coll. In addition, water temperature revealed an increasing trend which could be caused by global increase in air temperature. These results indicate that human activity significantly impacts the water quality.

Creative economies are today one of the fastest-growing economic sectors and an impressive transforming force, than can contribute to increasing territorial, regional or national competitiveness and, therefore, to economic growth and long-term development. The study aims to analyze the contribution of creative economies to the local and regional economy. Quantification of the role of creative economies in the economic profile was made by creating a database, at the level of administrative-territorial unit, with the main economic indicators (number of companies, number of employees, turnover and profit) for the creative economies, according to the NACE classification (Classification of National Economy Activities), for the period 2000-2016. The database was also used for the evolution of the ranks held by each economic sector for the analyzed period and for the development of trend matrices on the evolution of the above indicators, at the four-digit NACE code. The result highlight the importance of creative sector in the dynamics of local and regional economies of the territorial systems.

The bioclimatic analysis in the context of urban environment and tourism activity is relatively new in Romania and highly important for the development of tourism. In the present study, the evidence of increasing air temperature by the Temperature-Humidity Index (THI) was conducted in the Focsani City, Romania, within the period of 17 years (2001–2017). Bioclimatic conditions were defined for this area by the relationship between air temperature, relative humidity, and THI. Tourism activities, such as nights spent in the city and arrivals of tourists in accommodations, were associated with the THI for the periods 2001–2016. As the THI values increased, higher tourist activity was recorded as measured by the overnight stays and arrivals in accommodations. The results of the bioclimatological analysis further revealed a high discomfort by the low winter temperatures and the high summer heat. The highest THI value, recorded in this period, was 38.5 °C in August 2017, while the lowest was − 6.8 °C, in January 2013. The bioclimatic comfort positively correlated with an increase in the number of arrivals and nights spent, in summer and in early autumn. In this paper, the analysis of THI in Focsani City (Romania) was used as a research example, to show that analysis of extreme temperatures can improve the future characterization of climatic events, its variability, and spatial pattern. Higuchi Dimension (DH) was used for additional assessment of THI, in order to better define its annual and monthly THI complexity. The innovative results consist of using the DH to determine the degree of complexity of THI oscillations and their impact on tourism activity. This study reports tools that efficiently define periods when conditions are usually unfavorable for tourism. This information facilitates the decision to increase the tourist offer for this period and thus may help decision-makers in the management of regional tourism. This can be the basis for future studies on the prevention of negative effects caused by the extreme weather conditions.

The Mediterranean Region currently faces major environmental issues that require constant analysis and monitoring. This study presents a thorough approach based on the application of Landsat imagery from Global Forest Change during 2001–2019. Spatial distribution mapping was one of the objectives of the study. We approached the analysis of tree cover loss areas by analyzing the cumulative tree cover loss and Tree Cover Loss Rate. This indicator offers information about the trend of tree cover loss in each Mediterranean country. A total of 581 Mha of deforested area was mapped during the analyzed period. Analysis was further supplemented by some statistical operations (distributions shown via histograms, validation via Shapiro–Wilk normality test, and testing via one-sample t-test). Agricultural expansion, intense forest fires, illegal logging, overgrazing (especially in the northern part of Africa), and extensive livestock farming have influenced the Mediterranean forest ecosystem’s stability. The continuation of these activities could cause extreme climatic events, severe degradation, and desertification.

Creative economies are at the heart of the knowledge-based economy. The main objectives of the study are to present the spatial design of the regional systems of creativity in Romania and to identify the evolutionary trends, by creating spatial models for key economic indicators, specific to such economic activities. This paper focuses on how creative economies are concentrated in the national network of settlements and how they differentiate in terms of regional profile. Consequently, a yearly nationwide database was created for 2000-2012, which includes four-digit creative economic activities, according to the Classification of National Economy Activities, for each administrative unit in Romania. The analyses, conducted for the same period, show a concentration of creative economies as a national polycentric network which includes the capital city and cities with over 300,000 inhabitants, as well as their structured territorial systems emerging around them, representing the local and regional polycentric networks. The analysis of the economic profiles highlights the growing share of creative economies in the national economy that tends to contribute more and more to the increase of the operational complexity of the local and regional economies.

The mountain ecosystems face significant damage from deforestation and environmental forest changes. We investigated the evolution of tree types of cover areas, deforested areas and total deforested areas from Curvature Carpathians using Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix and fractal analysis. The forest dynamics mapping was one of the main objectives of this study and it was carried out using multiple fractal and GLCM indices. We approached the analysis of satellite forest images by calculation of four fractal indices such as Pyramid dimension, Cube Counting Dimension, Fractal Fragmentation-Compaction Index and Tug-of-War lacunarity. We also calculated fractal dimension because it is an index of complexity comparing how the detail in a pattern changes with the scale at which it is measured. Fractal dimension is useful for estimation of irregularity or roughness of fractal and natural objects that do not conform to Euclidian geometry. While the fractal dimension quantifies how much space is occupied, the Tug-of-War lacunarity complements fractal dimension with its ability to quantify how space is occupied. Analysis was further supplemented by the Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix analysis because it quantifies spatial probability distributions of gray level values between pixel pairs within an image. The calculated Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix features included Angular Second Moment, Contrast, Correlation, Inverse Difference Moment and Entropy. Such comprehensive analysis has the advantage of combining fractal analysis that extracts quantitative information about the morphological complexity of the image with the spatial distribution of the gray pixel intensities as calculated by the co-occurrence features provided by Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix. Evolution of deforested areas, expansion of agricultural land and the increased demand for quality timber have affected the forests ecosystems and, the regional sustainable development of local communities.

The ever decreasing area of forests has lead to environmental and economical challenges and has brought with it a renewed interest in developing methodologies that quantify the extent of deforestation and reforestation. In this study we analyzed the deforested areas of the Apuseni Mountains, which has been under economic pressure in recent years and resulted in widespread deforestation as a means of income. Deforested surface dynamics modeling was based on images contained in the Global Forest Database, provided by the Department of Geographical Sciences at Maryland University between 2000 and 2014. The results of the image particle analysis and modelling were based on Total Area (ha), Count of patches and Average Size whereas deforested area distribution was based on the Local Connected Fractal Dimension, Fractal Fragmentation Index and Tug-of-War Lacunarity as indicators of forest fragmentation or heterogeneity. The major findings of the study indicated a reduction of the tree cover area by 3.8%, an increase in fragmentation of 17.7% and an increase in heterogeneity by 29%, while fractal connectivity decreased only by 0.1%. The fractal and particle analysis showed a clustering of forest loss areas with an average increase from 1.1 to 3.0 ha per loss site per year. In conclusion, the fractal and particle analysis provide a relevant methodological framework to further our understanding of the spatial effects of economic pressure on forestry.

Urban pressure exerts a major impact on the territorial systems, on groundwater, in general, but especially groundwater quality and dynamic changes recorded significant socio-economic consequences on medium and long term. The detailed analysis of the relationship between groundwater and human settlements from the emerging areas of large urban systems, highlights the pressure on development, tracing some limits imposed by the depth of the piezometric level. The research involved the creation of a database with the depth of the groundwater and identifying steps expansion workspaces. The spatial layout of the indicators which were used in the research permitted the discovery of some areas where the decision to build something had been taken without analysing the low depth of piezometric level. The research focused on the emerging area of Bucharest, an area that has experienced an explosive social and economic dynamics. In the analysed area the expansion of the built areas has seen, especially in the last 25 years, causing functional ruptures in the local economy.

Monitoring the ratio of forested and deforested areas plays a key role in studying the dynamics of forest areas. Appropriate mapping of anthropogenic forest disturbances is particularly important in the context of sustainable forest management. It provides ecological, social and economic information which is crucial for forest policymakers. In the last two decades, the forest areas of the Moldo-Transylvanian Carpathians have been subject to a high rate of deforestation which at present state lacks proper quantification. We present a novel methodology for monitoring the forest disturbance dynamics in Moldo-Transylvanian Carpathians by use of fractal analysis including entropy, Fractal Fragmentation Index (FFI) and Tug-of-War lacunarity (Λ_(T-o-W)). This was necessary to quantify and identify the disorder (entropy), the fragmentation (FFI) and heterogeneity of the spatial distribution (Λ_(T-o-W)) patterns. Based on satellite images of the forest areas (annually 2000-2014), increased fragmentation was demonstrated by FFI increase, a measure of the degree of disorder (entropy) and heterogeneity (lacunarity). Our results revealed that textural and fractal analysis can be an effective tool for the extraction of quantitative information about the spatiotemporal dynamics of forest disturbance. The methods developed, and results obtained are a complementary approach to forest disturbance mapping (based on traditional image classification) for future development and adaptation of forestry management policies to ensure a sustainable management and exploitation of forest areas.

The tourism is nowadays an economic component that must be taken into account, a complementary sub-branch for the economic development of some territorial systems, especially of those with specific resources. The hypothesis of the study is to reveal how tourism functionality of a territory is a dominant or a complementary one. On the other hand it also shows the role of the tourism phenomena in shaping the basic functionality of some local economies. The methodology consists in a series of statistical analysis of data, for a period of 13 years (2000-2012), containing at administrative unit level and NACE code, evolution of the number of companies, particularly those operating in Tourism, the number of employees, turnover and profit. The results are represented by a series of statistical and cartographic detailed analysis, showing some correlation variations. For example: how the variation of the total profit is influenced by the variation of the turnover, of the number of companies and of number of employees. This are able to widely conclude the present contribution of the tourism sector in the local economy, to show if the economic functionality of a territorial systems belong to the tourism sector or there is also other economic activities that contribute to the complexity of the economic profile.

The study aims to identify the role of health tourism (SPA) in developing the territorial systems, characterized by the tourism functionality, in Romania, for the period 2000-2012, a period marked by spectacular transformations, especially for this economic sector. Tourism has now become a true economic engine, generating an increase in the functional complexity of the territorial system, which is based on exploiting tourism resources. To quantify how tourism has contributed to the economic development of these territorial systems in Romania a database of NACE codes was set up, specific for the tourism activity, for the period 2000-2012, for territorial mainframe systems with functionality resort. Based on this statistical support analyzes on the evolution of the number of companies, number of employees, turnover and profit were made. The results show the important role of health tourism in generating multiplier effects on other components of the economic subsystem. They were defined two categories of territorial systems: territorial systems where tourism plays a complementary role function and territorial systems in which health tourism has a preeminent role in the local economy.

This study attempts to predict aggregate profits for small and medium Romanian firms using a relatively naïve model We use a dataset consisting of 4,519 observations spanning a period of eleven years, from 2001 to 2011 Each observation is obtained by aggregating the data associated with all small and medium firms that can be found for a given NACE and SIRUTA code in the greater Bucharest metropolitan area Our sample includes a number of more than 1,514 observations that correspond to firms with aggregate zero turnover and aggregate zero number of employees These are in fact shell companies, firms that are inactive, but somehow remained in the evidence of the Romanian Trade Register Office We split our sample into two distinct periods, using the 2008 financial crisis as the dividing point We fit a simple prediction model of aggregate total profits as a function of four variables, using the pre-financial crisis period We test the predictions of our model using the post-crisis period The results are imparting three important lessons First, by allowing shell companies in our sample, the prediction accuracy of our model appears to weaken Many surveys and economic policy studies conducted by the Romanian government take into account all companies in the evidence of the Trade Register Office, whether active or not We thus strongly recommend that policy initiatives be based solely on statistical surveys that include only firms in operation Second, we do not need very detailed information, a large number of explanatory variables, or a very sophisticated model in order to achieve a good prediction power Using only four variables, our naïve prediction model boasts an impressive out-of-sample R-square of almost 62% Third, the 2008 financial crisis that wreaked havoc in Western Europe and North America, represented a true tipping point for the economy of the greater Bucharest metropolitan area as well.

The past decades have witnessed the emergence and development of creative economies all over the world. As an impressive transformative force and one of the most rapidly growing economic sectors in today’s globalized economy, the creative economy promotes human development, social inclusion, and cultural diversity, stimulates entrepreneurship, attracts a high-quality workforce, and constitutes a pathway to economic success in terms of income generation, job creation and export earnings. The aims of our chapter are to define the concept of creative economy and to analyse the evolution of the Romanian creative economy in the period 2001–2014. In this respect, the methodology is based on the use of the geographic information system software and of the grey level co-occurrence matrix and fractal analysis. The creative economies have proved to be a veritable development vector, showing superior capacity for adapting to structural crises, and contributed to the economic integration of Romania in the EU.

Deforestation and forest degradation have several negative effects on the environment including a loss of species habitats, disturbance of the water cycle and reduced ability to retain CO2, with consequences for global warming. We investigated the evolution of forest resources from development regions in Romania affected by both deforestation and reforestation using a non-Euclidean method based on fractal analysis.We calculated four fractal dimensions of forest areas: the fractal box-counting dimension of the forest areas, the fractal box-counting dimension of the dilated forest areas, the fractal dilation dimension and the box-counting dimension of the border of the dilated forest areas. Fractal analysis revealed morpho-structural and textural differentiations of forested, deforested and reforested areas in development regions with dominant mountain relief and high hills (more forested and compact organization) in comparison to the development regions dominated by plains or low hills (less forested, more fragmented with small and isolated clusters). Our analysis used the fractal analysis that has the advantage of analyzing the entire image, rather than studying local information, thereby enabling quantification of the uniformity, fragmentation, heterogeneity and homogeneity of forests.

This study uses fractal analysis to quantify the spatial changes of forest resources caused by an increase of deforested areas. The method introduced contributes to the evaluation of forest resources being under significant pressure from anthropogenic activities. The pressure on the forest resources has been analyzed for Maramures, County, one of the most deforested counties in Romania. In order to evaluate this, the deforested areas were calculated for the period of 2001-2014, by using the Global Forest Change 2000-2014 database. The Fractal Fragmentation Index (FFI) and Fixed Grid 2D Lacunarity (FG2DL) were used to quantify the degree of fragmentation and dispersion of the forested areas, and thereby the extent to which a forest area is affected by deforestation. The process of quantifying the pressure on forested areas included the creation of a database for the period of 2000-2014 containing economic activities (turnover) related to woody recourses, important indicators of forest exploitation. Taken together, the results obtained indicate a dramatic increase in deforested areas (over 19,122 ha in total for the period of analysis), in Maramures, County.

Urban settlements of regional importance from Romania impose within the national settlements system by their ability to converge material and human flows, leading to important unbalances in the relationships between the components of territorial systems. The status they held, both in the communist period and at present, made the economic activities developed in a short time exceed the adapting ability of the other components of the territorial system, the natural environment strongly feeling the industrialisation pressure. Identifying the specificities of the environmental risk management at the level of development poles of regional importance was done by detailed analyses accomplished in Craiova, a representative town for the high concentration of economic activities strongly pressing upon the natural environment. The construction of the model of environmental risk management supposes the classifying of risks by a series of criteria, a model which constitutes a useful instrument for the decision factors. The management of unbalances from the territorial systems determined by industrialisation is one of the major preoccupations of the decision factors from Romania, in order to be aligned to the European environment standards.

The goal of the present study is to analyze the complex economic processes within emerging territorial systems, developed around big cities. Economic ventures concentrated inside these urban clusters in a short span of time, and they registered a spectacular evolution, compared to the neighboring areas. Intensification of the linkages between cities with more than 300,000 inhabitants in Romania and the surrounding areas led to the individualization of territorial systems apart, with a spectacular evolution of economic-social processes, which turn those systems into the most dynamic territorial structures. The present study means to identify the causes of those complex processes within emerging territorial systems, the manner of functional organization of the space, and the causes that determine the spectacular evolution of the economic processes within emerging systems.

IntroductionThe main objective of this study is to demonstrate the difficulties related to the management of the areas tightly connected to cities in case of the states in the transition process from an excessively centralised economy to the market economy. These spaces are in a structural-functional disorder phase, with numerous distortions generated by delays within the institutional construction, as well as the lack of a culture of inter-communal cooperation. The management model of these areas specific to societies in transition, which suddenly changed their political and socio-economic regime, may complete the general management models of the metropolitan areas in a lineal change.When a culture of inter-communal cooperation lacks, the attitude of each decision factor at local level becomes a break in sustaining the genesis' processes of some coherent metropolitan areas, where the benefits of collaboration are reciprocal. The concrete situation of unsound cooperation within new metropolitan areas of Romania and the experience in promoting the dialogue between the representatives of local communities and of the city, determined us to propose to manage these areas by means of a type of integrated collaboration management, where consensus is the fundamental principle. This type of management may win the reciprocal trust of those who manage each community from the metropolitan areas and leaves free space to the display of enterprise spirit (Harvey 1989) in the unfolding of economic, social, cultural activities etc.A literature synthesisThe metropolitan area represented an important study subject for the sciences of territorial development during the last decades. The term of emergent metropolitan area was used by Elliot and Perry (1965), who contradicted classical theories regarding the role of the processes of population concentration in the development of new cities and showed that these processes were secondary, reported to the economic processes. Researches demonstrated contradictory processes of structuring/destructuring of metropolitan areas, which took more and more sophisticated spatial shapes. Historical incursion within the metropolitan apparition and development shows a tight connection between this and the dynamics of the production system (Scott 1982). The transition to the fordist economy, where large metropolitan areas were functioning as key elements of mass production towards the post-fordist economy, meant the industry's transfer outside these and the transition to a new type of economy, characterised by a large flexibility. The new cognitive-cultural economy encouraged processes of locational convergence (Scott 2008). Despite the fact distance seems to have disappeared (Hall 1999), digital revolution and telecommunications revolution re-evaluate the importance of geographical proximity in localising the actors who produce knowledge. The effects are visible in the new forms of urbanisation which are registered by such a diverse world at planetary scale, as the urban world.For the economies in transition from centralised systems to the market economy, it seems that some of the development stages are known by American and West-European economies as skipped or crossed with a very high speed. The impact of the new economy facilitates the almost instantaneous transition from the mass industrial production, extensive, to the new types of activities dominated by the superior tertiary (finances-banks, insurances, IT, research and higher education), by means of which the creative capacities of the employees are valorised. Unlike advanced states, the new types of economic activities revitalize less the town centres and more the suburbs, and especially their metropolitan space, in the countries with an emergent economy (Ianos 2004).Starting from the case of large cities from Romania, which did not know the classical process of suburbanisation (Nicolae 2002), and being declared closed towns for a few decades, and where economic-social and cultural relationships were dictated from the centre, the accelerated urbanisation around them determined a chaotic expansion of built space (residential, commercial, logistics, IT, productive activities). …

The purpose of this study is to identify certain environmental imbalances triggered by the new emerging structures and to highlight some effects on sustainable development for the metropolitan area of Bucharest. The morphogenesis of these imbalances is based primarly on the restructuring process experienced by the city in the transition process from planned to market economy and secondly, on the result of interaction between it and the new structures appearing due to uncontrolled urban and suburban development. The 15 new emerging structures, individualized for the first time on a uniform methodology, create a constant pressure on the natural environment. This pressure cumulates with the one developed by the city itself, both being evaluated through field research, interviews and through data and information analysis gathered from diferrent institutions and enteprises. All this have emphasized the alteration degree for some natural environmental components along the main access roads, and also between the new emerging structures. Statistical data related to water and air pollution have been provided mainly by the environmental agencies. Information from 30 interviews regarding the decision makers in sustainable urban development have enabled the creation of a pattern for environmental risks in new emerging structures of the metropolitan area of Bucharest. By taking into consideration the regional functions for emerging structures, which are seen as growth poles, this model can be a starting point for a sustainable development approach along with a spatial vision on polycentrism.