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.

Precisely determining agricultural land abandonment (ALA) in an area is still difficult, even with recent progress in data collection and analysis. It is especially difficult in fragmented areas that need more tailor-made methods. The aim of this research was to determine ALA using airborne laser scanning (ALS) data, which are available in Poland with 4 to 6 points per square metre resolution. ALS data were processed into heat maps and modified with chosen kernel functions: triweight and Epanechnikov. The results of ALS data processing were compared to the control method, i.e., visual interpretation of an orthophotomap. This study shows that ALS data modelled with kernel functions allow for a good identification of ALA. The accuracy of results shows 82% concordance as compared to the control method. When comparing triweight and Epanechnikov functions, higher accuracy was achieved when using the triweight function. The research shows that ALS data processing is a promising method of detection of ALA and could provide an alternative to well-known methods such as the analysis of satellite images.

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.

SummaryThe suburban areas are lands under strong anthropogenic pressure which results in their significant transformation. Identifying the direction of changes and their intensity is the basis of research based on the analysis of land use and land cover. The study involved the analysis of land cover in the area of suburban zone of the city of Krakow based on the vector geodata available in the European Environment Agency database (Urban Atlas download service). Geographic data were classified according to various categories of coverage. The area was divided into evaluation clusters that included covering buffer zones with the given parameters according to the distance from the city: zones 0-5 km, 5-10 km, 10-15 km and 15-20 km. All analyzes were performed by means of the QGIS software using geoprocessing tools and additional ones of spatial statistics (among other things Group Stats). The percentage of each category of coverage in relation to the total area was made for each of the separate buffer zones' statements. The theory of changing the structure of coverage categories along with diverging from the city according to the diagram of reducing participation of heavily anthropogenic areas to those less exposed to it was confirmed on the basis of this analysis. Keywords GIS • QGIS • Urban Atlas • land cover • buffer zones

In this paper, we reflect on the evolution of place-based governance from a longterm (15 year) study of rural development initiatives undertaken in a region of Poland as part of its accession to the European Union. We decompose the recursive process of institutional learning arising from initiatives for heritage preservation and rural economic development. In our analysis, we elaborate a typology of unavoidable development dilemmas that must be explicitly managed in order to allow place-based governance to effectively harness the cultural value, social context, and developmental needs of certain locales or landscapes. Although creating and sustaining local value remain contingent on broader realities of governance, proactive management of these dilemmas can help prevent many of the usual contestations around goals and identity from becoming intractable in later periods. Our proposed approach to enabling place-based governance emphasizes conflict recognition and engagement as important complements to more common prescriptive models of governance.