Landscape management within the Moscow city protected areas

Abstract

Nowadays, 118 urban natural protected areas of Moscow occupy more than one-fifth of the city territory. They are mostly located in urban peripheral areas which appeared within the city borders in 1960 and 1984. Their major role is provided for recreation and sports activities of the urban dwellers along with the protection of natural landscapes. The number of visitors of the Moscow city protected areas is about 5 million people annually. The analysis of the current situation shows several problems, including insufficient availability of protected areas in particular districts of the city; poor transport access, including that for disabled persons; incompleteness of the protected areas network and their weak connection with protected areas in the Moscow suburbs; absence of the general management programmes for the forest belt of the region; space discrepancy of the urban protected areas to the world city green standards and ecotourism. The actual experience of landscape planning in the urban protected areas of Moscow reveals different methodological difficulties. One of them is the contradiction between strict protection status of some protected areas and necessity of special regimes of landscape management. For example, it is impossible to maintain areas which are suitable for recreation without tree cutting. Another one is the erroneous point of view that urban protected areas are a virgin space. In fact, the majority of Moscow city protected areas have a long history of land use/land cover changes reflected in their present-day state. Landscape reconstruction for the Moskvoretsky Park demonstrates several stages of landscape evolution during the last 150 years. On the base of that history, the plan for landscape management was elaborated. The main aim of the plan is to define the desired state of landscape depending on landscape vulnerability and capacity and human perception.