A GIS-Based Approach to Land Take Monitoring and Actual Land Use Analysis

In September 2023, the European Commission approved a proposal for a Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience, representing a significant step forward in the EU’s efforts toward more sustainable land use management. The proposal mandates the monitoring of land take and soil sealing indicators but does not specify the method for determining their values. Instead, it allows for the use of scientific literature or other publicly available methods. This study presents a methodology based on GIS analyses for monitoring artificial land and the land take indicator. A quantitative analysis of two municipalities in the Podravska region in Slovenia is complemented by a qualitative assessment of detailed actual land use in these municipalities. The results show that the annual land take rate in the period 2019–2022 amounted to 881.96 m2/year·km2 in the municipality of Maribor and 731.31 m2/year·km2 in the municipality of Kungota. If current trends continue, the extent of (semi-)natural land will continue to decline, which is considered unsustainable. Further analysis reveals that the expansion of artificial land in these areas is mainly due to the development of new residential land, accounting for 60.8% of newly converted land in the municipality of Maribor and 50.2% in the municipality of Kungota during the period under review. As the results point to unsustainable land management, the study is aimed at policymakers and public authorities, highlighting the urgent need to limit the conversion of (semi-)natural land and to initiate land restoration measures as compensation for new land take. It may also be of interest to scientists and researchers developing methodologies for monitoring artificial land and refining land take indicators.