The aim of the paper is to develop a method to evaluate and monitor environmental spatial order to delimit problem areas. The method was tested on the carefully chosen suburban areas as natural valuable areas located in suburban and peri-urban areas are particularly prone to intense and chaotic development. The number of methods of spatial order evaluation is scarce. The paper is an attempt to fill this gap. We have used following indicators: afforestation rate, landscape diversity level, density of the total road network, rate of compact development, as well as the building intensity. Indicators used in the method have been chosen based on the literature and modified to adjust it to the available data. Our findings confirm that the method gives reliable results. It can be used to evaluate the efficacy of Local Spatial Development Plans and Environmental Protection Plans. Moreover, we delimited areas in which environmental spatial order could be improved.
Detailed spatial analysis of area coverage was performed in the present paper, which allowed to determine numerous derivative parameters connected with human activity as well as natural processes. Data from Database of Topographic Objects in nominal scale 1:10 000 (in short: BDOT10k) in GML format were used as source materials and processing of the source data to object-relational form of SpatialLite database was performed. Methods of areas classification and valorization on the basis of land coverage diversity were used in the research after using modification of classes selection to BDOT10k. Borders of spatial objects had geo-referential precision to 3 m and were not subjected to generalization process. It provided possibility to achieve high degree of credibility of calculated parameters. Materials that concern ecological corridors were obtained from the General Directorate for Environmental Protection by means of WFS service. Geoprocessing methods and spatial connections in GIS heterogenic systems were used to perform analyses. The effects of all the conducted analyses allowed to identify problem fields where areas of ecological corridors became strongly anthropogenized. The results were presented as multilayered compositions and cartograms. The research area covered 15,200 km 2 and ranged the territory of Małopolska province.
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