Enhanced land use datasets and future scenarios of land change for Slovakia

A detailed land use/land cover map for the European Alps macro region

Spatially and thematically detailed land use maps are of special importance to study and manage populated mountain regions. Due to the complex terrain, high elevational gradients as well as differences in land demand, these regions are characterized by a high density of different land uses that form heterogeneous landscapes. Here, we present a new highly detailed land use/landcover map for the areas included in the European Strategy for the Alpine Region. The map has a spatial resolution of up to 5 m and a temporal extent from 2015 to 2020. It was created by aggregating 15 high-resolution layers resulting in 65 land use/cover classes. The overall map accuracy was assessed at 88.8%. The large number of land use classes and the high spatial resolution allow an easy customization of the map for research and management purposes, making it useable by a broad audience for various applications. Our map shows that by combining theme specific "high-resolution" land use products to build a comprehensive land use/land cover map, a high thematic and spatial detail can be achieved.

Visibility Analysis to Enhance Landscape Protection: A Proposal of Planning Norms and Regulations for Slovakia

The visibility of a landscape is an important aspect of landscape protection planning because different rules or norms can be defined to regulate land-use and human activities depending on the degree of landscape visibility. Viewshed analyses are common GIS-based approaches to evaluate which parts of the landscape can be seen from certain points or by people located or moving in the landscape. In this work, the visibility of the entire landscape of the Slovak Republic is assessed from the network of major national roads. The results of the landscape visibility analysis are then used to propose appropriate planning norms and regulations to protect the identified visibility values and avoid potential visual obstructions from new buildings or infrastructure development. Particularly, the proposed norms indicate allowable changes to the landscape and the maximum height of new or existing buildings and other urban infrastructure. Maps of the spatial distribution of the proposed norms identify possible situations of consistency or conflict with potential urban development trends, to support landscape protection planning processes at the national level. On average, the most visible land-use/land-cover categories are glacial mountains relief, plane depressions, and wide alluvial plains, while the planning indications/prescriptions to protect landscape visibility have been proposed for irrigated land and forests. Thanks to the limited use of geographic datasets, the method ensures high transferability to other different geographic contexts, and allows to derive planning indications for large national contexts.

The Impacts of Urbanisation on Landscape and Environment: The Case of Slovakia

The development of urbanisation is linked to qualitative and quantitative changes in the landscape and its components aimed at strengthening economic, administrative and cultural-social functions, which are associated with ever-increasing pressures on ecosystems and their individual components. These pressures are subject to various factors—socio-economic, political, environ-mental, etc. In this paper, we present an evaluation of the environmental impacts of the development of urbanisation in Slovakia. Independent Slovakia belongs to the young European states. The communist period lasted from 1948 to 1989. The character of landscape, the quality of the environment and also the degree of anthropisation of territory were dependent on a centrally managed economy. Urbanisation changes began to manifest themselves rapidly after 2000, when the economy was transformed and Slovakia was preparing to join the European Union (Slovakia joined the European Union in 2004). The transformation from central planning into a market economy was the basis of the changes, which was conditioned following strong pressure of investors on the landscape, the construction of technological parks, shopping and logistics centres and transport infrastructure and the construction of residential complexes. According to the European Environment Agency’s study on urban sprawl between the mid-1950s and the end of the 1990s, industry, commercial and transport services have grown at a significant rate and the residential areas at a moderate rate in Slovakia. On the other hand, Slovakia has areas where urbanisation has the opposite trend. Rural settlements are abandoned as well as large areas of agricultural land. The character of land use has fundamentally changed over the past 20 years. These changes not only have a spatial dimension but are associated with the emergence of various environmental problems. The paper deals with the impacts of anthropisation and industrialisation of Slovakia after 2000. The anthropisation process in Slovakia was determined through data processed in GIS and also through the statistical data representing land use. Based on the ecological significance of land use elements, the degree of anthropisation in Slovakiawas calculated.

Data on land use and land cover changes in Adama Wereda, Ethiopia, on ETM+, TM and OLI- TIRS landsat sensor using PCC and CDM techniques

Land use and land cover changes are often referred for the anthropogenic modification of Earth's surface. The extents of land use and land cover (LULC) changes in Adama Wereda at three different periods (2002, 2010, and 2017) were generated using data from various Landsat sensors namely ETM+, TM and OLI TIRS. This work focused on a change detection analysis using post classification comparison (PCC) and change detection matrix (CDM). These images were geometrically corrected and image processing operations for instance: radiometric correction, using spectral radiance model was carried out, followed by land cover categorisation into water bodies, built up, bare land, sparse vegetation and dense vegetation employing Knowledge, pixel and indices based classification in ERDAS imagine software. The generated data of both change detection techniques from 2002 to 2017 revealed interesting aspect that build up, dense vegetation and sparse vegetation increased in area of approximately 160%, 30% and 78% respectively at the expense of barren land which decreased at 8.5%, but there is not much change in the water bodies. It was also noticed that both the algorithms gives similar values but with negligible deviation.