Wästfelt, Anders
- Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
A GIS-based tool for the measurement of local spatial context in satellite data is presented in this paper and used to explore the relationship between land covers present in satellite data and land use represented in official databases. By the use of the developed tool, a land configuration image (LCI) over the Siljan area in northern Sweden was produced and used for analysis. The results are twofold. First, the produced LCI holds new information about variables that are relevant for the interpretation of land use. Second, the comparison with statistics of agricultural production shows that production in the study area varies depending on the relative land configuration. Villages consisting of relatively large-scale arable fields and less diverse landscape are less diverse in production than villages which consist of smaller-scale and more heterogonous landscapes. The result is especially relevant for land use studies and policymakers working on environmental and agricultural policies. We conclude that local spatial context is an endogenous variable in the relation between landscape configuration and agricultural land use. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords
Land configuration; Agricultural land use; Spatial context; Relative scale; European landscape convention; von Thunen
Published in
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation
2013, volume: 23, pages: 234-244
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
SLU Authors
Global goals (SDG)
SDG11 Sustainable cities and communities
SDG15 Life on land
UKÄ Subject classification
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Human Geography
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2012.09.006
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/42802