Land degradation is a topical issue not only in Latvia, but also in Europe. Even the real estate additional tax rate of 1.5% does not prevent agricultural land from overgrowing, and there is no other legal mechanism to control it. One of the mechanisms of prevention of land degradation process is reconstruction of drainage systems, change of worthless agricultural land (less than 25 points) to forest land or improvement and return of agricultural land (more than 25 points) to economic production. Although such actions require financial resources, there may be a variety of financial support programs, for example, the decrease of the real property tax rate (in case of afforestation).

The purpose of this article is to analyse the rural development land use projects for farmstead site selection prepared in the municipality of Elektrėnai during the period between the years of 2012 and 2016, and to determine their potential impact on the growth of built-up areas and the rational use of land. According to the survey data, it can be stated that drafting rates of rural development land use projects for farmstead site selection tend to grow especially in those municipalities that are close to Vilnius and which have a good geographical position as well as a special landscape and national cultural heritage values (Vilnius district, Trakai district and Elektrėnai district municipalities). Having carried out the agricultural land change analysis, it is noted that during the analysis period (2012 - 2016) in Elektrėnai municipality, similarly to the whole Vilnius county, land utilities structure is dominated by agricultural land, mostly arable land, but the significant trend of agricultural land reduction at the expense of the growth of built-up areas was noticed. During the analysed period the built-up areas in the municipality of Elektrėnai increased even by 6 times, and the area of agricultural land declined on average, by almost 2 percent every year. A detailed analysis of specific projects and information gathered during qualitative research suggest that the prepared rural development land use projects for farmstead site selection are not prepared for the improvement of the actual farming activity conditions in constructing farm and other buildings.

The article presents the analysis of the current situation of the damaged land in Kaunas County. The methods of comparative, analytical as well as statistical and logical analysis were used for the investigation. The aim of the investigation is to carry out the analysis of the damaged land area in Kaunas County during the period between 2005 and 2017. The object of the investigation is Kaunas County damaged land. The study found that the number of affected areas in the county is 409. Because the damaged areas consist of mineral quarries and territories occupied by dumps, the article contains the description and condition of these areas. By 2009, there were 98 landfills in Kaunas County. Kaunas municipal waste management region comprises 6 municipalities; 58 old landfills and dumps were shut down, at present two regional non-hazardous waste landfills have been arranged. In 2017, the damaged land occupied 3,447.36 hectares and amounted to 14.15 percent of all Lithuanian damaged land and accounted for 0.43 percent of the county's area. During the period between 2005 and 2017 the damaged land area in Kaunas County increased by 236.48 hectares or 6.86 percent. The analysis of the damaged land area of the municipalities situated in the Kaunas County showed that the largest of these areas during the period between 2005 and 2017 was in Kaunas district municipality.

According to the fast development and distribution of GNSS technologies all over the world, the large numbers of reference GNSS stations have appeared in Ukraine. These stations are included in the state and several private networks. The permanent GNSS observations gathered within these networks are processed and analysed by the Centre of Lviv Polytechnic National University. A cumulative solution (coordinates expressed at the specified epoch and velocities of all stations) was estimated by using the GAMIT-GLOBK software. The authors made several numerous tests using certain configuration of fiducial stations which belong to the EPN A class to transfer ITRF08 frame into Ukraine area and choose the best strategy of alignment of the Ukrainian national GNSS network to the EPN. Three different solutions with cretin tolerance set for Ukrainian GNSS network were estimated and each time the different set of coordinates was obtained. The differences reached several millimetres. Also for verification, our solution was compared with EPN solution. Received coordinates and velocities could have a geophysical interpretation and provide very useful information for local geodesy tasks.

Land consolidation – an important stage of agricultural and rural development. This is a significant land use planning process, when private, municipal and state land parcels located in rural areas are redistributed in a complex way, their boundaries and location are changed by the prepared land consolidation project of a certain area. Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the benefits of land consolidation to farm structure and productivity, restructuring of rural areas and development, but there is not enough emphasis on the benefits of our environment, landscape and biodiversity. Experience of European countries shows that the land consolidation projects can be useful not only for farmers, but also for our environment and its individual components. The article gives an overview of not only the positive aspects of environmental preservation. The fact that the land consolidation projects can bring negative results (i.e. that they are implemented without regard to the sustainable transformation of the territory) is noted as well.

This article is concerned with the problem of establishing process equipment deformation regularities, in particular, gas engine compressors at the compressor station of underground gas storage facility in Bohorodchany due to ground topographic surface vertical movements caused by gas flooding into and extraction from the reservoir bed in different seasons. Values of longitudinal and lateral pitches of gas-engine-compressor units’ foundation plates were determined using the results of topographic surface vertical movements monitoring. This provides an opportunity to predict adverse processes in gas engine compressors operation. On the other hand, this monitoring facilitates resolution of land resources sustainable and efficient use issues at underground gas storage territories.

The subject of the paper is the change trends in the trade in undeveloped land and real properties designated for agricultural and forestry purposes in Poland with respect to the value and surface area of real properties sold. Another aim of the study is to present the differences between average transaction prices of undeveloped real properties designated, among others, for residential, industrial, agricultural and forestry purposes. The research covers the period starting from the accession of Poland into the European Union structures. The Polish real property market has been very active in the analysed period. The analysis of tendencies in real property sales transaction values in Poland in the time period from 2004 to 2015 demonstrates that the increasing trend prevailed from 2004 to 2008. Then, in 2009, the value of transactions decreased in comparison to the preceding year.

The article generalizes theoretical and practical addition to the components of mathematical processing of geodetic measurements, which are the basis and used to support work in land management and cadastre. The research identifies general components of mathematical processing of geodetic measurements and components which are primarily used in the field of land management and cadastre. Completed investigation of the theoretical and practical foundations of these components and developed theoretical and practical additions improve the results of mathematical processing of geodetic measurements.

The article analyses the changes of agricultural production development and the demand of rural planning in the post-reform period. The main aim of the research is to identify the problems of land use and the formation of farms as the territorial-production structures in Lithuania as well as to analyse the possibilities of finding solutions to them. Tendencies of the decrease of the number of rural residents and farms were determined, the regulation of which is possible by improving working and living conditions in rural areas by means of public support measures. In order to form land holdings of rational farms, to coordinate the residential construction, farmlands and the local road network, to preserve efficient agricultural land, it is suggested preparing the documents of land management planning. The implementation of these documents is associated with the regulation of the land use provided for by legislation, formation of cultural landscape, as well as with the EU and public support for the development of production of viable farms and environmental protection. It is recommended to supplement the rules of the preparation of documents of land management planning with methodological requirements for the arrangement of land parcels and for their conversion into other agricultural areas.

Geoportal.lt is a Lithuanian state information system whose scope is to allow all data users to freely access geographic data, maps and e-services. The portal also allows drawing relief altitude profile and set the altitude of point on location. It is performed by applying the tool “Set altitude of point on location”. It is one of the newest tools of geoportal.lt website, whose accuracy has not been analysed, and which, according to the information provided by GIS Centre, complies with the requirements set for 1:50000 scale maps. This tool is selected as an object of research, while the aim of the research is to analyse the accuracy of data provided by Lithuanian spatial information portal tool “Set altitude of point on location” in case of different land covers. The following methods of investigation have been employed: literary analysis; the analysis of cartographic material; field measurements and data processing; comparative analysis of data. The data is processed using Geomap and Microsoft Excel programmes. After the analysis has been carried out, it was established that the most common errors in all types of land covers are from 0.5 m to 1.5 m. Such errors comprise 70 per cent in forest areas, 35 per cent in built-up territory, and 53 per cent in thin land cover. Taking into consideration that the website geoportal.lt operates on the basis of orthographic map whose accuracy is 1 meter and the discussed tool shows the altitude of the nearest known point, it can be stated that the obtained presumptions are permissible. To summarise the obtained data, the tool is reliable. The reliability of the data is 91 per cent in thin land cover, 86 per cent in forest area, 75 per cent in built-up area. To compare it with topographic maps of analogous format, where the errors of altitudes may reach up to 10 meters, the tool is reliable even in case of major errors.