CHANGES OF THE FOREST LAND AREA AND SPATIAL STRUCTURE IN URBAN LANDSCAPES OF LITHUANIA

The territorial planning and the management of urban surfaces force the decrease of green spaces in urban landscapes. As the urbanization process during past decades of the last century was quite intensive not only in Europe but also in Lithuania, findings describing changes of forest cover as well as spatial structure of the forest land are requested. The aim of this study was as follows: first, to calculate and compare areas of the forest land in six major cities of Lithuania in 1950 and 2011, second, to evaluate the spatial structure of the forest land by investigated cities within the period of 1950 - 2011. Methods of descriptive statistical analysis and spatial analysis using ArcGIS and MS EXCEL software were used. The study was based on two geodatabases, representing the forest cover in 1950 and 2011. Results of this study revealed that areas of the forest land increased in all investigated cities excluding Panevezys city. The increases of areas of the forest land were discovered to vary from 0.8% to 9.5%. The largest increase was found in Vilnius city (9.5%), the smallest - in Siauliai city (0.8%). The decrease by 0.9% of the forest land was found just in Panevezys city. No significant changes of the forest land spatial structure were found in largest cities of Lithuania, i. e. Vilnius city and Kaunas city. The spatial structure of forest land in other investigated cities tended to degrade.