Changes of forest land areas in cities of Lithuania during 1950-2011

Abstract

The basics of modeling green spaces in Lithuania are Nature Frame as well as environmental conditions [1]. However, planning of green spaces in urban landscape strongly depends not only on environmental conditions and Nature Frame, but also on the structure of the plan, size and functions of the cities [2]. This study aims to evaluate changes of forest land areas in six major Lithuanian cities (Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai, Panevėžys, Alytus) during 1950-2011. Geodatabase of forest land areas in 1950 and geodatabase of the Lithuanian forest cadastre (2011) were used in this research. Geodata as well as data on forest land area in a particular city of Lithuania were gained using ArcGIS software, where ArcGIS Clip tool and statistics for the table were used. In order to obtain geodata of forest land in the investigated cities, recent boundaries of the cities were selected. The results of this study revealed that forest land areas have increased in all the investigated cities of Lithuania excluding Panevėžys city (Table 1).The changes of forest land areas within the period of 1950-2011 ranged from 0.8 % in Šiauliai city to 9.5 % in Vilnius city, while in Panevėžys city the forest land area has decreased by 0.9 %, i. e. from 163.9 ha to 122.4 ha, resulting in forest area proportion of 2.4 % in 2011.