Abstract
The presence of wilderness areas in the Carpathian Mountains suggests that the Natural habitats that are part of this region still maintain their ecological functionality, but there are chances that some of these were not included into the network of protected Natural areas. There is thus an urgent need to find a method that can reliably identify them. True wilderness areas are very hard to find in the European landscape, due to strong anthropogenic impacts, which include intensive and extensive agriculture combined with other forms of resource exploitation, such as logging, overgrazing, mineral extraction, infrastructure projects, energy production and so on. The main ecological functionalities of these habitats can be permanently disrupted, thus losing the true meaning of what these areas stand for. A significant negative impact has been repeatedly recorded on populations of umbrella species, such as European brown bear Ursus arctos (Káre 1978), and other large carnivores. These species can be used as indicators for conservation actions, because of the large areas covered by their home ranges, which in turn help to protect almost all other species of interest in the region.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Carver, S., et al. (2002). Wilderness attribute mapping in the United Kingdom. International Journal of Wilderness, 8(1), 24–29.
Carver, S., et al. (2008). Wilderness study in the Cairngorms national park, Final report, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
Carver, S., et al. (2012). A GIS model for mapping spatial patterns and distribution of wild land in Scotland. Landscape and Urban Planning, 104, 395–409.
Dudley, N. (Ed.). (2008). Guidelines for applying protected area management categories. Gland: IUCN.
Fritz, S., et al. (2000). New GIS approaches to wild land mapping in Europe. USDA Forest Services Proceedings RMRS-P, 2, 120–127.
Káre, E. (1978). Human impact on a brown bear population (Ursus arctos L.). Biological Conservation, 13(2), 81–103.
Klein, C. J., Wilson, K. A., Watts, M., Stein, J., Carwardine, J., Mackey, B., & Possingham, H. P. (2009). Spatial conservation prioritization inclusive of wilderness quality: A case study of Australia’s biodiversity. Biological Conservation, 142(7), 1282–1290.
Landres, P., et al. (2008). The matrix: A comparison of international wilderness laws. In C. F. Kormos (Ed.), A handbook on international wilderness law and policy (pp. 31–54). Golden: Fulcrum Publishing.
Openshaw, S. (1984). The modifiable areal unit problem, CATMOG 38. In Geo Abstracts, Norwich.
Roşu, A. (1980). Geografia Fizică a României. Bucureşti: Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică.
Saaty, T. L. (1977). A scaling method for priorities in hierarchical structures. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 15, 57–68.
Sibson, R. (1981). A brief description of natural neighbor interpolation, interpolation, multivariate data, Chapter 2 (pp. 21–36). New York: Wiley.
Tobler, R. W. (1993). Three presentations on geographical analysis and modelling (Technical report, pp. 93–101). Santa Barbara: National Centre for Geographic Information and Analysis, University of California.
Waren, D. L., & Seifert, S. N. (2011a). Environmental niche modelling in Maxent: The importance of model complexity and the performance of model selection criteria. Ecological Applications, 21(2), 335–342.
Waren, D. L., & Seifert, S. N. (2011b). Agency for Payments and Interventions in Agriculture, Informative guide for farmers seeking support for agro-environmental measures in 2011, version 3.0, PPS-AG.
Waren, D. L., & Seifert, S. N. (2011c). Convention regarding the protection and sustainable development of the Carpathians (Conventia Carpatica, Kiev, 22 may, 2003), approved by the Law 389/2006.
Waren, D. L., & Seifert, S. N. (2011d). Government Emergency Decision No. 57 from June 2007, regarding the regime of Natural protected areas, conservation of Natural habitats, wild flora and fauna, approved by the Law 49/2011.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Erika Stanciu, the initiator of this project, for sure the main supporter of wilderness in Romania and also to Adrian Hăgătiş and Alexandra Doba who provided huge contribution to the project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Măntoiu, D.Ş., Nistorescu, M.C., Şandric, I.C., Mirea, I.C., Hăgătiş, A., Stanciu, E. (2016). Wilderness Areas in Romania: A Case Study on the South Western Carpathians. In: Carver, S., Fritz, S. (eds) Mapping Wilderness. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7399-7_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7399-7_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-7397-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-7399-7
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)