Ciprian CORPADE¹, Titus MAN¹, Dănuţ PETREA¹, Ana-Maria CORPADE¹ & Ciprian MOLDOVAN^1
1”Babeş-Bolyai” University, Faculty of Geography, 5-7 Clinicilor Street, 400006, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, e-mail: ccorpade@geografie.ubbcluj.ro, tman@geografie.ubbcluj.ro, dpetrea@geografie.ubbcluj.ro, ana.corpade@geografie.ubbcluj.ro, cmoldovan@geografie.ubbcluj.ro

CHANGES IN LANDSCAPE STRUCTURE INDUCED BY TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS IN CLUJ-NAPOCA PERIURBAN AREA USING GIS

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The infrastructure development projects planned and partly implemented around some major Romanian cities have significantly changed the characteristics of the natural landscape. Based on the landscape metrics, we analyzed the state of landscape fragmentation in the urban and periurban area of the municipality of Cluj-Napoca before and after the implementation of the projected road network. In this respect, we used a combination of ArcGIS functions and interpolation methods (Calculate Geometry function, Topogrid and IDW interpolations), as well as Patch Analyst extension. The statistical analysis was applied to a territory of almost 60000 ha and the total length of proposed transportation projects is 96 km. The results showed higher values for Number of Patches, Total Edge, Edge Density after the transportation projects implementation, while Mean Patch Size values decreased. In order to gain expressivity, three sites with high concentration of proposed roads were selected to be analyzed comparatively, significant changes being identified in land-use structure within the categories arable lands (Number of Patches increasing with 13 up to 54 and Mean Patch Size decreasing with 4.21 up to 4.94 ha) and roads (Number of Patches increasing with 1 up to 3 and Mean Patch Size decreasing with 1.86 up to 6.60 ha). In the eastern part of the region, due to multiple crossings of the Someşul Mic River, important differences were pointed out within the flowing water category (Number of Patches increasing from 4 to 18 and Edge Density from 28.26 to 31.86, while Mean Patch Size decreased from 6.72 to 1.49 ha). The applied methodology could constitute an effective tool to be used in the Strategic Environmental Assessment of transportation projects to complete those commonly applied that approach mainly subjective aspects as landscape aesthetics.