The spatially explicit assessment of land use and land-use change patterns can identify critical areas and provide insights to improve land management policies and associated decisions. This study mapped the land uses and land-use changes in Lithuanian municipalities since 1971. Additionally, an analysis was conducted of three shorter periods, corresponding to major national land-use policy epochs. Data on land uses, available from the Lithuanian National Forest Inventory (NFI) and collected on an annual basis with the primary objective of conducting greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting and reporting for the land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) sectors, were explored. The overall trend in Lithuania during the last five decades has been an increase in the area of forest and built-up land and decrease in the area of producing land, meadow/pasture, wetlands, and other land uses. Nevertheless, the development trends for the proportions of producing land and meadow/pasture changed trajectories several times, and the breakpoints were linked with important dates in Lithuanian history and associated with the reorganization of land management and land-use relations. Global Moran’s I statistic and Anselin Local Moran’s I were used to check for global and local patterns in the distribution of land use in Lithuanian municipalities. The proportions of producing land and pasture/meadow remained spatially autocorrelated during the whole period analysed. Local spatial clusters and outliers were identified for all land-use types used in GHG inventories in the LULUCF sector at all the time points analysed. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used to explain the land-use change trends during several historical periods due to differing land management policies, utilizing data from freely available databases as the regressors. The percentage of variance explained by the models ranged from 37 to 65, depending on the land-use type and the period in question.

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Landscape naturalness is an important indicator for supporting sustainable development-driven policies and suggesting associated decisions in land management. This study used CORINE Land Cover data to estimate the changes in land cover naturalness in Lithuania since 1995. All the land cover types were ranked according to naturalness level, ranging from purely anthropogenic to natural landscapes. Spatial patterns of the increase or decline in landscape naturalness were investigated at the level of municipalities. Then, publicly available geographic data were mobilised to explain the reasons behind the trends observed. A minor increase in land cover naturalness in the whole area of Lithuania was observed; however, this increase was statistically insignificant. Nevertheless, statistically significant clusters with both increasing and decreasing levels of land cover naturalness were identified when moving to the level of municipalities. The trends in the development of landscape naturalness were associated with the specificity of agricultural and forestry activities in the municipalities. The suitability of lands for agriculture due to soil, terrain, current land use specifics, and related drivers, such as the availability of land reclamation installations and the intensity of land use, were the main drivers for the declining level of land cover naturalness, usually concentrated in northern and central Lithuania. The land cover naturalness did increase in less suitable areas for agriculture, i.e., in the more forested southeastern municipalities. The study emphasised the need for a systematic and spatially explicit monitoring of the land cover patterns and their changes as well as elaborated proposals for land management policies over the next decade, which were mostly in the line with current European Union and national strategies.

Effective management decisions regarding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may be hampered by the lack of scientific tools for modeling future land use change. This study addresses methodological principles for land use development scenario modeling assumed for use in processes of GHG accounting and management. Associated land use policy implications in Lithuania are also discussed. Data on land uses, available from the National Forest Inventory (NFI) and collected for GHG accounting from the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector in the country, as well as freely available geographic information, were tested as an input for modeling land use development in the country. The modeling was implemented using the TerrSet Land Change Modeler. Calibration of the modeling approach using historical land use data indicated that land use types important for GHG management in the LULUCF sector were predicted with an accuracy above 80% during a five-year period into the future, while the prediction accuracy for forest and built-up land was 96% or more. Based on several land management scenarios tested, it was predicted that the LULUCF sector in Lithuania will accumulate CO2, with the forest land use type contributing most to CO2 absorption. Key measures to improve the GHG balance and carbon stock changes were suggested to be the afforestation of abandoned or unused agricultural land and prevention of the conversion of grassland into producing land.

The trends of forest cover change in Lithuanian municipalities are introduced in the current paper. Two sources of information on the forest cover in 1950s and today (2013) were used in this study: (i) a geographic forest cover database developed using historical orthophotomaps based on aerial photography, which was carried out in the period just after the World War II, and (ii) the information originating from the State Forest Cadaster and referring to the year 2013. These two layers were compared using GIS overlay techniques. The data was made available for the analyses aggregated up to the municipality level. The Global Moran’s I statistic and Anselin Local Moran’s I were used to identify global and local patterns in the distribution of forest cover characteristics in Lithuanian municipalities, respectively. The  main finding of this study was that the  proportion of the  forest cover in 1950 was 26.5%, i. e. notably differing from the official statistics – 19.7%. The proportion of the forest cover increased in all municipalities during the period 1950–2013. The largest increase in forest cover proportion was in the areas less suitable for agriculture. The relatively largest areas of new forests were identified in the south-eastern part of Lithuania, the deforestation was relatively slowest around less forested municipalities, while the afforestation was relatively slowest around the agricultural Pakruojis municipality. Deforestation was most commonly associated with the forest transformation into agricultural land, less often into scrublands or waters.

Lithuanian forestry has long been shaped by the classical normal forest theory, aiming for even long-term flow of timber, and the aspiration to preserve domestic forest resources, leading to very conservative forest management. With radically changing forest management conditions, climate change mitigation efforts suggest increasing timber demands in the future. The main research question asked in this study addresses whether current forest management principles in Lithuania can secure non-decreasing long-term flow of timber and carbon accumulation. The development of national forest resources and forestry was simulated for the next century using the Kupolis decision support system and assuming that current forest management is continued under the condition of three scenarios, differing by climate change mitigation efforts. Potential development trends of key forest attributes were analysed and compared with projected carbon stock changes over time, incorporating major forest carbon pools—biomass, harvested wood products and emission savings due to energy and product substitution. The key finding was that the total carbon balance should remain positive in Lithuania during the next one hundred years; however, it might start to decrease after several decades, with steadily increasing harvesting and a reduced increase of forest productivity. Additionally, incorporating the harvested wood and CO2 emissions savings in carbon balance evaluations is essential.

The rational use of land should be ensured, soil-friendly agricultural branches should be developed as well as attractive environment for work, living and resting in the countryside should be created in promoting rural development in Lithuania. Areas with favourable natural conditions have a high degree of economic activity, farm size, and economic development. However, not everywhere the natural conditions for the development of agriculture are favourable. The research was carried out in the Giedraičiai rural area of Molėtai district, which deals with the factors influencing the use of land, the declared area of land, the problem of land abandonment. The methods of legal analysis, analysis of literature, analysis, comparison and aggregation of statistical data were used during the research. After the fulfilment of the analysis of the declared area of land during the period between the years 2012 and 2016, it was established that the area of agricultural land declared during the five years increased by 655 hectares, the number of farmers who declared agricultural land decreased by 104, and the number of declared parcels declined even to 1729. The process of the growing of farms is likely to occur. The area of abandoned land in Giedraičiai subdistrict reaches 300 hectares, the number of abandoned areas exceeds 800. Estimating the statistical data and solutions of the general plan of the Molėtai district area preliminary solutions for the management of the territory of the Giedraičiai subdistrict for agriculture and rural development are being provided, i.e. it is planned to implement rural development land use planning projects for the management of farms, and to select a farmhouse farm site. To reduce the abandoned land areas, it is advisable to plan forests, expand the areas of meadows and natural pastures, apply organic farming and adapt the areas for recreation.

A road is an engineering structure that performs a very important purpose of transportation. Roads are divided into categories that stand out for their importance and significance. One such category is local roads, which are classified in the lowest category. The most common problems that arise with these roads are that on this category of roads due to low traffic, road maintenance is simply not carried out or many such roads are not registered with the State Enterprise Center of Registers, resulting in changes in road boundaries when forming adjacent plots. Discrepancies in the use of local significance roads are observed as well during road cadastral measurements and the preparation of cartographic material. The aim of this article is to analyze the problems of local road use in Šiauliai district Kairiai eldership. The analyzed topic is new, little studied in the domestic and foreign literature, but it is very relevant in production, therefore there is a need to analyze and identify the problems of the use of local significance roads in more detail. During the research, the special plan of the communication system of Kairiai eldership, land management plans and orthophotographic maps were examined. It has been established that Kairiai eldership is classified as a suburban area, which is likely to affect the growth of the local road network, which currently amounts to 120 km. A detailed analysis of the lengths of local roads in Kairiai eldership revealed that the entire network makes up 37 per cent of public roads, 36 per cent of streets and 27 per cent of internal roads. The majority (more than 15 km) of local significance internal roads are made up of gravel pavements. After the cadastral measurements, analysis of territory planning documents and other planned material, it was established that 29 local significance roads were not registered in Kairiai eldership, and instead of the indicative length of 20.8 km of these roads, only 16.7 km were identified, i.e. 4.1 km discrepancy/deficiency detected. Also, during the study, the analysis of territory planning documents and other primary planning material revealed that the following problems of road use are most common: poor road maintenance, improper road use, selfish connection of the road to the existing land plot and road interference with private land plots. In order to avoid certain identified problems, it would be appropriate to set up a kind of monitoring system that would allow the condition of the roads to be monitored and contribute to the planning of their management. It is also very important to oblige landowners to use existing land plots in an orderly manner. Local road management plans are needed with increased funding as well as obliging landowners to use and maintain their land properly.