On 22–25 October, project partners from Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary met in Prešov, Slovakia, to discuss the progress of joint research activities and plan the next stages of the project. The meeting focused on the evaluation of 40 educational trails, the ongoing questionnaire survey, research on natural history museums and preparations for forthcoming workshops.
The questionnaire survey has made substantial progress, with more than 80% of the planned responses—nearly 600—already collected. The partners also discussed the methodology for investigating natural history museums and the criteria for selecting institutions for the study. In addition, they reviewed the planned workshops, including their duration and thematic scope.
Fieldwork along an educational trail in the former opal mining area near Prešov in Dubniki provided an opportunity to examine the interpretive content in relation to the landscape and its environmental history. The evaluation revealed that soil-related topics are almost entirely absent from the trail’s interpretive panels, with the word soil appearing only once. Content addressing human impacts on the environment is also lacking.
The former opal mining area (world's oldest) represents an important example of a landscape transformed by both open-cast and underground mining and subsequently undergoing natural regeneration after the cessation of extraction. The effects of past mining activities remain visible in the local topography, including ravine-like landforms created by mining operations. However, the existing interpretive panels do not adequately address these features or explain the long-term environmental consequences of mining. The findings point to opportunities to improve the educational value of the trail by incorporating content on soil, landscape transformation and human–environment interactions.
The meeting concluded with an agreement on the next steps in the project and the coordination of upcoming research and educational activities.
The project is financed by the International Visegrad Fund, whose mission is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe. (Photos by M. Świtoniak, L. Demkova, L. Bobulska, T.J. Novak & P. Charzyński)
