Artificialization of agricultural land in Prague metropolitan area

Bc. Helena Zapletalová

Diplomová práce

Abstract:

The paper provides quantitative and qualitative analysis of the agricultural land loss due to urbanization in 71 randomly selected villages within the Prague metropolitan area. The built-up and buildable areas were mapped and vectorized from the raster satellite imagery and the spatial planning documentation. The artificialized area was subsequently classified into the agricultural land protection classes and the quality of artificialized land was examined. The dependencies of the soil loss on the impact of metropolitan area were analyzed through the correlation with the location-related, socio-economic and planning determinants. The distance from the core city boundaries, the commuting time and distance to the core city, the size of the cadastral area, the population and population density, the number of commuting people and the closeness to the main transport network were selected as the examined indicators.The results show that the built-up and buildable area ratio in the selected municipalities is higher, than the national average and depends on the urban-rural gradient of metropolitan area. The ratio of artificialized and sealed area within the selected villages is even higher than the EU average. The analysis indicates the biggest land grabs of high quality agricultural land in the nearest Prague hinterland, where the fertile soil is located and where is put strong suburban pressure on the land use change at the same time. The most important factors influencing the size of artificialized area are the total municipality population, the population density and number of people commuting to Prague together with the commuting distance to Prague city center. According to the analysis, the municipalities with larger built-up areas, which experienced bigger suburban growth, are planning more regulated development meanwhile the less urbanized municipalities in the 40 minutes commuting distance from Prague are planning significant urban growth.

Keywords

spatial planning, land grabbing, land use change, suburbanization, agricultural land protection, GIS

Jazyk práce: angličtina

Datum vytvoření / odevzdání či podání práce: 19. 4. 2016

Obhajoba závěrečné práce

• Vedoucí: Ing. Vratislava Janovská, Ph.D.

Česká zemědělská univerzita v Praze

Fakulta životního prostředí

Magisterský studijní program / obor:
Krajinné inženýrství / Landscape Planning