About Us
- Environment in the urban regions of different types
The research is focused on getting knowledge and information about the environment in urban regions of different types (e.g. environmental impacts of economic transition and restructuralization in the Ostrava region; geography of small towns and their role in the settlement system; social and spatial impacts of demographic changes connected with the second demographic transition in the large cities in Central Europe; problems of brownfields in urban areas and their revitalization, etc.). - Environment in the rural, especially marginal and peripheral
regions
The research activities are focused on getting knowledge and information about environment in the rural, especially marginal regions (e.g. sustainable development of the rural regions a modifications of the rural landscapes; Euro-regions, trans-boundary cooperation as tool for improvement of environment; transformation of the agriculture, etc.). - Environmental hazards and their impacts
The attention of the research is especially paid to the issue of the environmental hazards in the landscape and their ecological and geo-ecological impacts (geography of the natural hazards – floods, landslides) and to environmental impacts of creation and operation of the selected large investments (e.g. different types of the power plants, projects of the transport infrastructure, renewable energy developments, etc.).
Brno Branch of the Institute of Geonics was founded in 1993
as the result of transformation of the Geographical Department
of Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. It was established as a
spatially separated Department of Environmental Geography of the
Institute of Geonics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
The research activities are connected with the main research
program of the Department with the title “Environment and
landscape in the urban and rural regions under influence of
European integration processes”. The research plan focuses on
the concept of environmental geography which can be regarded -
from the conceptual and methodological point of view - as an
intersection of physical and human geography. The main object of
research is not just a landscape but also the complex
environment; the research activities focus on all the spheres
(not just the physical environment, but also social, economical,
and cultural aspects). Moreover, the research focuses especially
on the dynamics of those spheres, on the proceeding processes,
anthropogenic changes, and last but not least on the role of the
environmental and landscape protection in relation to spatial
planning, regional development and quality of human life.
The main research program is divided into three sub-programs,
which is implemented by means of the research activities of the
concrete international and national grant projects,
international bilateral and multilateral scientific cooperation
and expert studies.
The preference of partial research topics and projects is naturally related not only to the concept of research general plan but it respects also projects that are being solved at other geographical workplaces. In this sense the department succeeded not just in reflecting the current global and regional social issues (natural hazards, energy industry development and land-use conflicts, brownfields revitalization, quality of life in urban and rural areas, etc.) but also in saturating gaps in the current Czech geographical research – it aims at such problems that other geographical institutions do not focus on or they are dealing with just marginally.