Põllumajandusministeeriumi ja Maaelu ... - bioenergybaltic

Estimation of the land resources of Estonia
(Compiled by A. Astover, H. Roostalu, L. Kukk,
A. Padari, P. Muiste, E. Suuster, A. Ostrouhova, I. Melts)
Summary
The main goals of the project Land Resource (Maaressurss) were to:
• determine potential land resource for bio-energy production;
• determine abandoned land area and compose corresponding map layers;
• describe and analyse factors affecting potential re-use of abandoned agricultural land
for bio-energy production;
A rapid decline in agricultural land use has occurred in Estonia since the restoration of
independence in 1991. The scale of this decrease in arable land was the most drastic change in
the whole of Europe, and was higher than other post-Soviet European countries by a factor of
3.9. The use of abandoned agricultural areas is considered as one potential way of increasing
bio-energy production.
General review of land resources has made according to the Estonian Basic Map. The
accuracy and content corresponds to the mapping scale of 1:10,000. The corresponding areas
must be further corrected with line objects. Total potential land resource for biomass
production is in Estonia approximately 3.7 million hectares. The largest proportion is covered
by forests (2.4 million hectares).
Abandoned agricultural areas were identified using following map layers: basic map, base
map, orthophotos, cadastre map, and field layer (1.13 mil. ha) of Agricultural Registers and
Information Board (ARIB) and databases of Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) payments in
2007. Areas without any applications for CAP area payments were considered abandoned.
ARIB field parcels without any applications for CAP area payments were considered entirely
abandoned and others were considered as partially abandoned and others as partially
abandoned.
The total abandoned agricultural land is about 430 thousand hectares but from that 144
thousand hectares are outside of ARIBs field parcels. In 2007 there were about 840 thousand
hectares fields that was covered by CAP subsidies and 286 thousand hectares without
applications of which entirely abandoned field parcels formed 123 187 hectares (on 49 190
fields). Consequently about 163 thousand hectares are located on fields which are partially in
use. The highest abandoned land resource in ARIB fields is in Tartu, Lääne-Viru, Harju and
Saare counties. The share of abandoned agricultural land is highest in Hiiu (41%) and smallest
in Järva county.
Thematic maps for agricultural land were composed for every county. ARIB`s fields were
distributed to classes according to the proportion of abandoned land. The fields and grasslands
that weren’t registered in 2004 in ARIB`s registers were extracted from basic map and also
considered as potentially available land resource for bioenergy production.
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