Urban Sprawl in Estonia

International audienceThe seminar presentation demonstrates research on land cover analysis in western Estonia. Study area is Pärnu region located on the western part of the country, along the coasts of Baltic Sea. The region is a valuable environmental part and a unique recreational area of Estonia. The presentation consists of two parts. The fist part presents technical workflow of the image processing by means of GIS and Lansat TM satellite imagery. Methodology is base don Arc GIS 10.0 and IDRISI GIS Andes 15.0 for image processing. The aim is to detect land cover changes using image classification by 'ISOCLUST'. Raster images processing and classification was applied for Landsat TM two images. The ISOCLUST is an unsupervised classification method in IDRISI GIS. It performs image processing workflow in semi-automatically regime. Results include 16 land cover types typical for the study area classified and visualized on the images. In 2006 the urban area became larger than in 1992 (land cover class "3" on the histogram. This can be explained by various reasons. Changes in land cover types in selected Estonian landscapes are shown on the statistical histograms on 1992 and 2006. The second part presents social analysis of the current development of tourism and recreation on Baltic Sea coasts with discussion of new directions and perspectives. Notable natural settings include mild marine climate condition and precious coniferous forests. Presentation briefly discusses historical development of the tourism in the country and gives directions on its modern development caused by active socio-economic changes since 1990s. The research is methodologically based on the author's fieldwork in the study area, literature review and analysis of the statistical graphs of the socio-economic data. The study presents photos of the Estonian landscapes