Dopad globálnych megatrendov na krajinu a jej ekosystémy

Anotace: Global megatrends (GMT) are among the systems’ characteristics of today’s environmental challenges. GMTs were identified by the European Environment Agency (EEA). According to the EEA, about eleven major megatrends defined in five clusters affect the condition of the environment in Europe. The first cluster covers four social GMTs. This includes differential population trends, increasing the urbanization rate, the changing diseases burden and the pandemics risks. The second, technology cluster, represents accelerating technological progress and the third cluster represents economic growth, a multipolar world and an intensified global competitive struggle for resources. The fourth, environmental cluster is key cluster for assessment of the impacts of global change on the countryside and society. This includes three GMTs defining increasing pressure on ecosystems, increasing the severity of the problem and consequences of climate change and growing environmental pollution. The last fifth cluster, referred to as management, covers the diversifying approaches to management. Individual GMTs and their effects are interconnected. For example, social megatrends (increasing urbanization rates, technological progress, etc.) are linked to environmental megatrends by increasing pressures on the natural resources use, ecosystems takeover, etc. Relationships between individual global changes in societal development are more or less unknown, and there are many shortcomings in the knowledge of their impacts on the landscape, its components, phenomena and processes, what is proven by deterioration in biodiversity, degradation of natural resources and overall decline in the quality of the environment. The consequences of many changes are cumulative. These relationships are extremely complex and require new approaches in the form of multidisciplinary basic research in interaction with social and natural sciences, not only at the declarative level, but also with the aim of linking new knowledge to management policies. The paper focuses on description GMTs relevant to the territory of the Slovak Republic