Spatial Dynamic Of The Agriculture Fields Towards Their Shape And Size

Abstract

O.V. Zhukov, V.O. Sirovatko, N.O. Ponomarenko

We estimated the size and shape characteristics of agricultural fields within the administrative area and identified patterns of the margin trends from 1950-1960 till the present time. Here we considered large-scale soil maps for the area of Vasilkovsky district of the Dnepropetrovsk region, which were drawn up in 1950-1960. To assess the landscape metric we used FRAGSTATS program which allow to make conformity assessment of the observed distributions of field sizes regards the normal, exponential, log-normal, gamma, Weibull, and Pareto distributions. We also used Box-Cox transformation to convert the experimental data into the normal distribution law for the further application of the transformed data in regression analysis. We estimated that the area of agricultural fields ranged from 1.20 to 269.00 hectares during the period of large-scale mapping in 1950-1960. The variation limits of the field sizes based on the results of remote sensing data and in our time they are 2,.5-266.57 hectares. Area of the fields in different periods strongly correlate and are statistically significant (r = 0.98, p = 0.00). Field sizes currently associated with the field sizes in the 50-60 years of linear regression. Shape parameters and field sizes significantly correlated, therefore, to establish the main trends of varying shape and size of fields, as well as for non-multicollinearity variables for regression analysis, we performed a multivariate factor analysis. An important aspect of the structuring of the agri-landscape is the location of settlements and, therefore, the fields distance from them. In results obtained indicate that the processes increase and decrease the size of fields in agricultural production are determined by various factors. Aspects of the shape and size of the fields associated with the dynamics of the processes that lead to variations in field areas. Fields that have shown a tendency to change their size, have different characteristics of forms and size from the stable fields. Typically, variable field size is smaller and more complex shapes.

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