The unprecedented growth of prosperity in developed countries, including the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, interrupted by the economic crisis in 2008–2009, came to a halt at the beginning of 2020. This was due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 respiratory disease pandemic, for which no cure was known in June 2020. The response of governments in the form of declaring a state of emergency and closing national and regional borders for several months had serious economic and, above all, psychological consequences. Anxiety, depression, and possibly suicides were expected to increase. In this paper, we focused on the experience of happiness, understood as positive emotion, expressing the highest degree of well-being. The conceptualization of happiness is based on the analysis of six indicators. The aim of the paper was to explore the experience of happiness during the COVID-19 pandemic in Czechia. Two hypotheses were formulated in terms of the expected effects of this pandemic on the experience of happiness. Measuring happiness in one region of the Czechia on a scale of 0–10 using both face-to-face methods and social networks yielded different results from those expected.

Happiness in Czechia during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Aim. The aim of the article is to look for an answer to the question of whether it is worthwhile to deal only with happiness and to leave the exploration of quality of life as something which is not viable, or if it makes sense to deal with both phenomena. If so, what is the relationship between them? At the same time, we ask ourselves whether happiness and quality of life are perceived equally by people and are therefore interchangeable.
Results. The answer is also confirmed by measuring the number of published articles monitored in the Web of Science. The quantification of happiness and quality of life implies that their correlation is high but not so high that they can be identified as the same. At the same time, if happiness and quality of life are different phenomena, it makes sense to deal with both.
Method. The research was conducted using the face-to-face interview method.
Conclusion. Happiness and quality of life, in terms of attention given to them by researchers, are quite different.  We think mistakenly that they are the same on account of the preponderance of impression given to happiness in public space.

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Happiness or Quality of Life? Or Both?

(1) Background: Exploring the interactive relationship between intensive land use (ILU) and tourism industry development (TID) is of vital significance to promote the high-quality and sustainable development of tourism and the urban economy. (2) Methods: This paper constructs an evaluation index system of ILU and TID, and comprehensively measures the coupling and interaction between ILU and TID in China’s 58 major tourist cities from 2004 to 2018 by using the entropy weight method, coupling coordination degree model, and panel vector autoregressive model. (3) Results: In terms of the coupling relationship, the coupling coordination degree of ILU and TID in China’s major tourist cities were optimized year by year, and the coupling coordination degree from 2004 to 2008 was less than 0.2, which is part of the serious imbalance recession stage. From 2009 to 2018, the coupling coordination degree was between 0.2 and 0.4, which is part of the moderate maladjustment recession stage. In terms of interactive response, ILU and TID formed a long-term interactive relationship, and the intensity effect of ILU on TID is significantly higher than that of TID on ILU. (4) Conclusions: There is a significant correlation and bidirectional process between ILU and TID, and they have an essential impact on the high-quality development of tourist cities.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/10/7/697/pdf

Coupling Relationship and Interactive Response between Intensive Land Use and Tourism Industry Development in China’s Major Tourist Cities

Astrotourism is considered to be a modern form of ecotourism. The main resource for astrotourism is a high-quality night sky, but this is very sensitive to natural as well as anthropogenic factors; for example, land utilization and expansion of urban areas often cause the negative effect of light pollution. The aim of the study is to perform a lighting survey by night sky brightness (NSB) measurements using the sky quality meter (SQM-L) at 20 study sites of the Slovenske stredohorie Upland region (Slovakia) and to assess the region’s potential for astrotourism development (PAD) using a multicriteria analysis. The NSB values ranged from 19.90 (city Žiar nad Hronom at Žiarska kotlina Basin) to 21.54 mag/arcsec2 (recreation area Poľana at Poľana Mountains). At 14 out of 20 study sites, the NSB values even reached 21.2 mag/arcsec2, as recommended by the International Dark-Sky Association for dark-sky parks. Four study sites were categorized as sites with medium PAD, and sixteen with low PAD. No study site reached a high or very high PAD. The best conditions for astrotourism development are fulfilled mainly by the Poľana Mountains geographical unit. The findings can be used for sustainable astrotourism development, land management, and planning to ensure socioeconomic development, together with nature and dark-sky conservation.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/10/374/pdf

Landscape Potential and Light Pollution as Key Factors for Astrotourism Development: A Case Study of a Slovak Upland Region

The paper deals with distance learning of geographic information systems (GIS) at the Department of Geography and Regional Development FNS CPU in Nitra using various educational materials and the JitsiMeet application during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students of bachelor study had GIS lessons in face-to-face instruction in a computer room for half of a semester. In the middle of the semester, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Slovakia and the face-to-face instruction had to be reoriented to the distance form of learning. The first month of distance learning took place with the help of textbooks and video tutorials, which were sent to students. The task of the students that month was to study a new subject, then students were sent a questionnaire where they had to express their opinion on learning GIS using video tutorials and textbooks, but also indicate whether they had facilities for online learning (PC, audio and video outputs, Internet) as well as to express their views and experiences with online learning as such. Although after evaluating the questionnaire, up to 71% of students answered that they had learned a new subject from the video tutorials and 57% also from GIS textbooks, several percent of students were still unfit for this form of learning. That is why we went to lessons with the free JitsyMeet app, which allows for video conferencing, screen sharing, chat, and more. The aim of the paper is to point out the perception of distance GIS learning by university students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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GIS Distance Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic (Students’ Perception)

The paper presents pedagogic experiment focused on teaching future geography teachers to work with story maps with the use of three applications (Knight Lab StoryMapJS, Esri ArcGIS StoryMaps, and G...

Evaluation of story maps by future geography teachers

The landscape surrounding the village of Civ (Piliscsev in Hungarian) in the north of the Komarom-Esztergom County is part of the cultural heritage of the Slovaks in Hungary. This paper discusses the issue of the Civ landscape changes in the context of its use (historical land use). Between 1701 and 1709, new inhabitants began cultivating the desolated landscape of the Dorog Basin, which is surrounded by the Pilis Mountains. This paper aims to characterize the Slovak exclave Civ land use with an emphasis on the period from the beginning of the 18th century (Slovak colonization of the analyzed territory) to 2019. These findings subsequently lead to the evaluation of the stability of the cultural-historical landscape as an essential condition for the development of ecotourism in the cultural landscape. The study results show that a long-term stable cultural landscape has a similar potential for the development of ecotourism as a natural landscape (wilderness). Research conclusions were aimed at creating three proposals for the cultural landscape management of the study area, conceived by the fundamental pillars of ecotourism, which would lead to its stable and sustainable use in ecotourism.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/15/6048/pdf

Land-Use Changes of Historical Rural Landscape—Heritage, Protection, and Sustainable Ecotourism: Case Study of Slovak Exclave Čív (Piliscsév) in Komárom-Esztergom County (Hungary)

This paper analyses the effectiveness of self-evacuation activities of population by private vehicle transport from flood hazard areas, aimed at minimising the negative effects of flooding.. The paper relies on a four-step traffic model which is based, inter alia, on the results of questionnaire studies. Moreover, the model takes into account the entirety of national traffic, which allows the methodological problems related to the border effect to be overcome. As shown in the study, the shortest or the fastest routes achievable in the pre-flood period are not always most optimal when the flood has already occurred. In such a case, evacuation planning will increase the efficiency of the process. Thus, inadequate designation of evacuation routes may adversely affect the process of relocating people to places of safety. Therefore, it is important to create plans that provide information on evacuation zones, routes and destinations. 

Emergency management of self-evacuation from flood hazard areas in Poland

At present, the protection of nature and landscape in the high mountains of the Western Carpathians, protected as national parks, is becoming increasingly at the forefront of society’s interests in connection with the development of their economic use and the development of mass tourism. Our research was focused on analyzing the extent and character of land cover changes in the Low Tatras National Park in Slovakia over the last 30 years (1990–2018) using CORINE land cover (CLC) data. The period captures almost the entire existence of the Slovak Republic. Therefore, it was possible to evaluate the landscape changes in the protected area and to identify barriers and possibilities of its long-term sustainable development. Based on computer modeling, the main areas of the land cover changes were identified, and on the basis of historical-geographical and field research, land cover flows were determined and justified in the studied landscape of the national park. Changes were monitored using three methods: by comparing CLC maps over the years, by analyzing land cover flows, and by comparing landscape metrics obtained through the PatchAnalyst. Land cover changes occurred on up to 20% of the national park area in the given period. The most significant change was observed in the CLC class coniferous forests, with almost a 12% decrease. Conversely, there was an increase of more than 11% in the CLC class transitional woodland-shrub.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/12/483/pdf

Michaela Žoncová

Papers

Evaluation of story maps by future geography teachers

Land-Use Changes of Historical Rural Landscape—Heritage, Protection, and Sustainable Ecotourism: Case Study of Slovak Exclave Čív (Piliscsév) in Komárom-Esztergom County (Hungary)

Emergency management of self-evacuation from flood hazard areas in Poland

GIS Distance Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic (Students’ Perception)

Mapping of the Land Cover Changes in High Mountains of Western Carpathians between 1990–2018: Case Study of the Low Tatras National Park (Slovakia)