Terraced Landscapes

Book excerpt: Terraced landscapes with agricultural terraces are cultural landscapes with a special value. They provide food and also have priceless scientific, cultural, historical. ecological, aesthetic, and even psychological, philosophical, and religious value. They form a unique agricultural and ecological system that can be found throughout the world. In some developed civilizations they were created in an organized manner over millennia, and in others they arose completely spontaneously as people adapted to natural conditions and improved their opportunities to make a living. They therefore reflect a harmony between man and nature, and in many cases also between people themselves. This volume presents them in pictures and words in all their diversity and attractiveness. After discussing the global and European dimensions of terraced landscapes and their agricultural terraces, the volume focuses on Slovenian terraced landscapes; they are discussed separately by landscape types and sample cases in the territory of selected settlements (pilot areas). The conclusion also draws attention to the exceptional value and appeal of non-agricultural terraced landscapes that have been shaped by nature and man. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Terasirane pokrajine, sestavljene iz kmetijskih teras, so kulturne pokrajine s posebno vrednostjo. Zagotavljajo hrano, imajo pa tudi neprecenljivo znanstveno, kulturno, zgodovinsko, ekološko, estetsko, celo psihološko, filozofsko in religiozno vrednost. So svojstven kmetijski in ekološki sistem po celem svetu. Ponekod so v razvitih civilizacijah organizirano nastajale skozi tisočletja, drugje pa povsem spontano, ko se je človek prilagajal naravnim razmeram in izboljševal svoje možnosti za preživetje. Zato se v njih zrcali sožitje med človekom in naravo, marsikje pa tudi med ljudmi. Knjiga jih v sliki in besedi predstavlja v vsej njihovi pestrosti in privlačnosti. Najprej so izpostavljene svetovne in evropske razsežnosti terasiranih pokrajin in njihovih kmetijskih teras, precej prostora pa namenja tudi slovenskim terasiranim pokrajinam, in sicer ločeno po pokrajinskih tipih in po vzorčnih primerih, ki obsegajo območja izbranih naselij. V sklepnem delu opozarja tudi na izjemnost in privlačnost nekmetijskih terasiranih pokrajin, ki sta jih oblikovala narava in človek.