Open Journal of Ecology, 2018, 8, 623-645 http://www.scirp.org/journal/oje ISSN Online: 2162-1993 ISSN Print: 2162-1985 DOI: 10.4236/oje.2018.812037 Dec. 17, 2018 623 Open Journal of Ecology Ecosystem Services in Differently Used Agroecosystems along a Climatic Gradient in Slovakia Jarmila Makovníková 1 , Boris Pálka 1 , Miloš Širáň 1 , Beáta Houšková 1 , Radoslava Kanianska 2 , Miriam Kizeková 3 1 National Agricultural and Food Centre, Soil Science and Conservation Research Institute, Bratislava, Slovenská 2 Department of Environment, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Matej Bel University, Banská Bystrica, Slovenská 3 National Agricultural and Food Centre, Grassland and Mountain Agriculture Research Institute, Banská Bystrica, Slovenská Abstract For analysis and evaluation of potential of agroecosystem (arable land and grassland) services (provisioning, regulating and cultural) in Slovakia we have created a mapping unit combining these input layers: slope topography, soil texture and landuse in four climatic regions. Evaluated potential of agroecosystem services was categorised into five categories (very low, low, medium, high and very high). Our results show that climate has the most significant impact on agroecosystem services. Warm, dry lowland region has a higher potential of provisioning services, regulation of water regime, filtration of pollutants and control of soil erosion in comparison to moderately warm and cold regions. In moderate cold region, more than 90% of the total area of arable land has low potential of water regime regulation and cleaning potential (immobilization of risk elements). In the moderate warm climatic region, there is a high share of categories of low and moderate potential of provisioning services and low and moderate potential of water regime regulation. Majority of the total area of warm climatic region belongs to the categories of moderate to high potential of provisioning services and high potential of regulation of water regime. In this climatic zone low potential categories of risk elements immobilization are present in more than 65% of the arable land total area. On the other hand, in very warm climatic zone, more than 89% of the total area of arable land belongs to the category with a very high cleaning (buffering) potential. Potential of natural conditions for recreation is higher only in moderate cold and moderate warm climatic zones with a higher proportion of area of grassland agroecosystems and protected areas NATURA 2000. Moreover, the methodology developed in this paper is How to cite this paper: Makovníková, J., Pálka, B., Širáň, M., Houšková, B., Ka- nianska, R. and Kizeková, M. (2018) Eco- system Services in Differently Used Agroe- cosystems along a Climatic Gradient in Slovakia. Open Journal of Ecology, 8, 623-645. https://doi.org/10.4236/oje.2018.812037 Received: March 20, 2018 Accepted: December 14, 2018 Published: December 17, 2018 Copyright © 2018 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access