Recent land cover changes in Latvia

Abstract

Increase in use of biomass as renewable source of energy in Europe is tightly linked to the policies aimed at mitigation of climate changes i.e. reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. Both for assessment of the carbon sequestration and emissions as well as for assessment of potential amounts of biomass for renewable energy, information of land cover dynamics are essential. Therefore, the aim of our study was to improve accuracy of estimates of the land use changes in the time period between 1990 and 2014. Land use categories were determined in accordance to UNFCCC: wetland, cropland (arable land, bare field), forest, grassland, settlements (urban/suburban area), and other land. Combination of data from National forest inventory (NFI) sample plots and analysis of Landsat images were used. For the classification based on Landsat images vegetation index (NDVI) was estimated and linked to known information on the land use type from NFI sample plot data. In the analysed period, the most significant changes were found for forest lands - the total area of forest land during the last two decades had increased by 1% (64.5 thousand ha). Similar increase (1.2%) was observed also in the area of cropland. Both of these tendencies were primarily the result of marginal field area reduction (by 2.6%). Increase in forest area and thus annual increment has led to an increase in above-ground biomass by 10.2 m 3 ha -1 .