Jędrzej Gąsiorowski, Elżbieta Bielecka, Zenon F. Poławski - Monographic Series No 18
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Multivariate analysis of environmental determinants of rural areas development
Summary. Rural areas represent more than 93% of the territory of Poland and play a significant role in contributing to economic, social and environmental development. The present picture of Polish agriculture and rural areas is constantly changing. The evolutionary character of their development is natural, induced by the need to adapt to the changing situation and socio-economic environment. Past experiences related to the development of agriculture and rural areas in Poland have shown that many problems are generated due to a lack of balance between economic, social and environmental factors.
The purpose of this study is to present the methodology of multivariate analysis of environmental determinants of rural development. This methodology consists of four factors. The first factor consists of a set of indicators and characteristics that quantitatively describe environmental determinants (physiographic conditions, infrastructure, etc.) and rural development (spatial arrangement and morphometric characteristics of land parcels and holdings within the village). The second factor comprises the procedures and algorithms for determining values of these indicators and characteristics. The third factor is the model defining the relationships between environmental determinants and the development of rural areas, which is based on the indicators and characteristics. The final factor of the methodology of multivariate analysis of environmental conditions of rural development is the concept of creating thematic maps that intuitively represent the spatial distribution of indicators characterising the development and facilitate further analysis and making certain decisions.
The basic assumption in the development of the list of indicators list for rural development was to determine whether an indicator expresses the essence of rural development and is adequate for the analysis of environmental determinants for the development of rural areas. The indicators refer to physical characteristics of a given phenomenon, such as the absolute size and relationship to other components and mostly have a one-dimensional nature. However, some of the developed indicators are measures of synthesising features that show broader background phenomena and express the relationship of the different aspects linked together. The reference units for determining the values of indicators were land parcel, agricultural holding and village.
The basis for the analyses conducted was provided by data obtained from the National Geodetic and Cartographic Resource, municipal administration, and the Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation. Rural areas located in south-west, south-east and central Poland have served as a testing area. As a result of land consolidation carried out there in recent years, they are all characterised by an organised structure of farms and, due to varied locations, diversified terrain relief, infrastructure accessibility and land use structure. The spatial level of detail of the study corresponded to the accuracy of maps of a scale of 1:5 000.
To determine the values of indicators for the reference units in the study area cartographic modelling techniques were used. Cartographic modelling is a methodology that plays a very important role in the analysis of conditions associated with elements of the natural environment and social and economic factors significant to rural areas. Cartographic modelling methods allow the performance of either simple or complex spatial analyses with a particular emphasis on distribution or availability analyses and the calculation of single or synthetic indexes. Cartographic modelling has included, inter alia, the analysis of geographic objects spatial distribution focussing on the measuring of density, clustering and the dispersion of point, linear and surface objects, availability analysis allowing the determining of potential development possibilities for rural areas and multi-factor analysis, which includes searching for statistical and spatial relationships between objects.
The main part of the proposed methodology for multivariate analysis of environmental conditions for development of rural areas is the model of relationships between the selected features, which is based on indicators. It allows the assessment of the quality level of rural development, understood as the mutual spatial arrangement of land parcels and holdings in the area of a village. The model of multivariate analysis of environmental determinants of the development of rural areas was developed using the method of classification and regression trees (CART) of regression type. The methodology concept assumes also that at each level of the analysis (land parcel, holding and village) individual indicators are presented using thematic maps. This presentation contains information about the quality and spatial distribution of rural development indicators for the given environmental conditions in an area.