Jedrzej Gasiorowski, Elzbieta Bielecka

Land fragmentation analysis using morphometric parameters

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Abstract

The article introduces the morphometric parcel analysis, which was performed for the four villages located in the central and southern part of Poland. These areas due to environmental and topographical conditions are characterized by a relatively high land fragmentation. The area of the parcels ranges from 45 m2 to 68 hectares. The study included the analysis of area and shape of the parcels, the distance from the human habitats, and the manner of land use on the parcels. The correlation between the various factors was examined for the individual villages. It revealed, that there exist relationships between shape, slope and way of land use on the parcel and became the basis for proposing of the morphometric index, which allows for assessing geometric characteristics degree of the parcels and the land fragmentation. Morphometric analysis of parcels is interesting in many fields of spatial sciences including land management on rural areas. The article provides a contribution to an area-wide quantitative statistical description and classification of morphometric parameters such as shape, area and slope of existing agricultural parcels. Research is based on geodata from the Lands and Buildings Register in Poland, which constitutes a part of cadastral system.

Keywords:shape index; land management; spatial structure; land fragmentation.