BIOPRESS (‘Linking Pan-European Land Cover Change to Pressures on Biodiversity’), a European Commission funded ‘Global Monitoring for Environment and Security’ project, produced land cover change information (1950—2000) for Europe from aerial photographs and tested the suitability of this for monitoring habitats and biodiversity. The methods and results related to the land cover change work are summarized. Changes in land cover were established through 73 window and 59 transect samples distributed across Europe. Although the sample size was too small and biased to fully represent the spatial variability observed in Europe, the work highlighted the importance of method consistency, the choice of nomenclature and spatial scale. The results suggest different processes are taking place in different parts of Europe: the Boreal and Alpine regions are dominated by forest management; abandonment and intensification are mainly encountered in the Mediterranean; urbanization and drainage are more characteristic of the Continental and Atlantic regions.

Similar to other post-communist countries, Slovakia has undergone significant changes in the last decades—largely through transformation of central planning into a market economy. Unfortunately, this process has been associated with increasing pressure on surrounding ecosystems and their individual components. These changes are subject to various influences, e.g., socio-economic, political and environmental; in addition, urbanisation has also had great influence. This is typified by conversion of productive agricultural land and semi-natural ecosystems into built-up area accompanied by the negative ecological impacts of habitat deterioration and fragmentation. The rapidly changing consumption patterns of luxury living, transportation and leisure have increased the negative consequences on ecosystems and these compound the negative environmental trends. This paper evaluates land use changes in Trnava, which is one of the most rapidly developing cities in Slovakia. Evaluation covers 1838–2015, with explicit emphasis on transformation over the last 25–30 years. We present comparison with developments since 1990 in other cities in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany and then discuss the main processes and environmental problems related to these changes, concentrating on the sustainability of current trends and appropriate planning and management responses.

The development of urbanisation is linked to qualitative and quantitative changes in the landscape and its components aimed at strengthening economic, administrative and cultural-social functions, which are associated with ever-increasing pressures on ecosystems and their individual components. These pressures are subject to various factors—socio-economic, political, environ-mental, etc. In this paper, we present an evaluation of the environmental impacts of the development of urbanisation in Slovakia. Independent Slovakia belongs to the young European states. The communist period lasted from 1948 to 1989. The character of landscape, the quality of the environment and also the degree of anthropisation of territory were dependent on a centrally managed economy. Urbanisation changes began to manifest themselves rapidly after 2000, when the economy was transformed and Slovakia was preparing to join the European Union (Slovakia joined the European Union in 2004). The transformation from central planning into a market economy was the basis of the changes, which was conditioned following strong pressure of investors on the landscape, the construction of technological parks, shopping and logistics centres and transport infrastructure and the construction of residential complexes. According to the European Environment Agency’s study on urban sprawl between the mid-1950s and the end of the 1990s, industry, commercial and transport services have grown at a significant rate and the residential areas at a moderate rate in Slovakia. On the other hand, Slovakia has areas where urbanisation has the opposite trend. Rural settlements are abandoned as well as large areas of agricultural land. The character of land use has fundamentally changed over the past 20 years. These changes not only have a spatial dimension but are associated with the emergence of various environmental problems. The paper deals with the impacts of anthropisation and industrialisation of Slovakia after 2000. The anthropisation process in Slovakia was determined through data processed in GIS and also through the statistical data representing land use. Based on the ecological significance of land use elements, the degree of anthropisation in Slovakiawas calculated.