: Angelija Bučienė, Sébastien Gadal, Jelena Galinienė, Viktoras Gailius36AngelijaBučienė, SébastienGadal, JelenaGalinienė, ViktorasGailiusThe Geographic-Restrospective Analysis of Landscape in Žemaičių Naumietis Ward

National audienceResearch aim was to analyse seminatural and agrarian urban landscape components of Žemaičių Naumiestis ward as well as social demographic factors and their changes within the ward boundaries and time scale (from soviet time till recent years) in order to distinguish the common tendencies of these changes. The seminatural landscape components – forests, water bodies and their area as well as agrarian urban components (agricultural land use with arable land, pastures and meadows, builtup territories) and their changes in time and space were analysed of social demographic factors, population, density and settlement size were focused on. The statistical and historical document analysis methods as well as distance and GIS modelling were applied. Land cover mapping of the territorial and geographic changes were computed by remote sensing using Landsat series satellite images of the studied area around Žemaičių Naumiestis town (297km2) in 1988, 1998, 2005 and 2015 and ortographic photo data method in 1997 and 2013. Žemaičių Naumiestis as a town (the old name is Naumiestis, or Nowe Miasto in Polish) was mentioned in the historical documents from the 17th century. Only in the fourth decade of the 20th century it was named Žemaičių Naumiestis – as one of the territorial administrative units of western Lithuania. The first collective farm in the ward was founded in 1959, and in the last decade of soviet governance there were two sovhozes specialised in vegetable seed husbandry, milk and meat production, one educational farm, as well as one forestry .The greatest population and its density in the ward was documented in 1970 (4,744 and 49.2 inhabitants per km2), and the greatest population in Žemaičių Naumiestis town in 1985 (2,500). At the same time rural population and its density in the ward decreased. The distinguished spatial changes of rural population decrease were observed served in the south eastern part of the ward (decrease by 40–60 and >%), where the number of small villages prevailed. A few of them, like Dekintai, Užšustis and Klebonai, were almost empty. After restoration of independence in 1990, the land reform changed drastically the configuration of agricultural land plot cover: asa result of restitution of private land, at first the plots of agricultural land decreased in size, but increased in the number of owners, at the same time some plots became abundant, because their owners were too old to manage the farm. Nowadays increase in private farm area is going on. According to the latest Censuses of land in 2003 and 2010, the number of farms in Šilutė district and in Žemaičių Naumiestis ward started to decrease, however the total agricultural area even increased. Thus the farms became larger in area.The research based on different distant methods revealed that in the beginning of the 21st century there was reduction in agrarian components of landscape and urban (builtup) areas. Seminatural components (water bodies) have remained unchanged in the area, while the forest area slightly increased. The same tendencies of landscape component plot changes from the end of soviet era up to now have been observed both in the total Žemaičių Naumietis ward territory as well as in the studied Žemaičių Naumiestis ward parcel (297km2). The secondary agricultural land consolidation and stabilisation of agrarian landscape fragmentation is to be documented in the ward nowadays.Despite different changes in land use, decrease of villages and rural population, the landscape of Žemaičių Naumiestis has remained more agrarian as compared with Silute district, on the average. The agrarian activities became more diverse, the first ecological farm appeared in 2006, and they have increased in numbers since then. The forests are slightly increasing in the area, thus the situation with natural landscape components in the ward is improving. However, the necessity to strengthen the social economic cultural status of population life remains the task of high importance