The prime agricultural land conservation areas are one of the tools to protect cultural landscape. With appropriate analysis and evaluation we control the development of landscape. By doing so, we insure the maintenance of the landscape characteristics that occur in a certain part of the landscape and, consequently, we protect activities and uses that have resulted in the current state of the cultural landscape. A loss of the agricultural land means negative changes in the cultural landscape and a simultaneous loss of the landscape characteristics. This master's thesis deals with the role and importance of landscape characteristics in the determination of prime agricultural land conservation areas. Cultural landscape is a dynamic structure in which socioeconomic changes are reflected. An interpretation of landscape characteristics is necessary to enable the development of activities in the cultural landscape. In this thesis we deal with the definition of landscape elements that appear in cultural landscape. Three testing areas are located in the municipality of Ivančna Gorica. The first step was to map all the landscape elements that appear in the testing areas. Secondly, the individual landscape elements were field-tested and complemented on the prime model. The last step was the evaluation based on Gestalt laws of grouping. The defined criteria for determining areas and their evaluation are as follows: conservation, diversity, consistency, typicality and – an additional criteria – a protection regime. Areas of landscape characteristics are areas where landscape characteristics are important for determining the areas of prime agricultural land conservation and are in the area of cultural landscape. Homogeneous areas are defined by pre-set criteria. The spatial layer will be used as one of the conditions for determining the prime agricultural land conservation areas. The result represents the input data for future research on the local community level.
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