Consulting is a catalyst for scientific and technological progress in agriculture, promotes the dissemination of new knowledge, and is quite reasonable and necessary in the current socio and economic conditions. Organization of a system of land use planning - one of the main areas of regulation of land relations in the ongoing land reform. Training of specialists in the field of land use planning should include consulting and component for diffusion of innovation in achieving sustainable development of territories and effective use of agricultural land. The article concentrates on experience in consulting education at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine and its using based State University of Land Use Planning in Moscow.

The article concentrates on problems of land/real estate degradation in Belarus, as well as on the ways of solving them by means of land management. The analysis of various documents resulted in the conclusion that there is a lack of a unified conceptual and terminological framework with regard to the following terms and concepts: ''degradation'', ''land degradation'', ''degraded lands'', ''land conservation/protection'', ''real estate degradation'' and others. The concepts of ''land parcel'' and ''real estate unit'' are compared. As an effective tool for combating degradation of land and real estate the article offers more efficient use of land management system developed for this purpose, as well as other legislative, institutional, organizational and technological measures.

The article deals with the subject of the real property taxation system currently in force in Poland and in Latvia. The current basic real property taxation rate in Poland applies per 1m² of the estate's total area and additionally depends on the manner in which the property is used. Real property tax income becomes part of the budget of the commune in which the property is located. The forest tax and the agricultural tax are established separately. For many years there have been plans for changing the tax system used in Poland to the cadastral tax, which uses the cadastral value, resembling the market value of the real property, as the basis for real property taxation. Cadastral assessment in Latvia is mainly used for calculating the real property tax. To calculate the cadastral value of a particular object, five assessment models have been developed. They are: assessment model for building land, assessment model for rural land, assessment model for buildings, assessment model for apartments and assessment model for engineering technical objects. Real property tax and the amount of objects are determined by the law in Latvia.

The problem of abandoned agricultural land is relevant in Lithuania, particularly in the territories where poor soils are dominant. The aim of this research is to analyze the statistics of abandoned land in poor soil regions by different estimation methods. The abandoned land was registered for the purposes of the research. Areas might be determined by using statistical data and by applying the results of a distant research method. The initially obtained data showed large differences among the areas of abandoned land determined by different calculation methods, and this might cause a lot of problems, in particular when clarifying the validity of the land taxation. Therefore the initial data of the research concerning abandoned land should be essentially revised. The results of abandoned land accounting and evaluation (inventory) in each territory should be checked and confirmed by the committee of qualified specialists. The reasons of abandonment should be determined for each land plot, and further use of the plot should be determined. Plots of abandoned agricultural land should be estimated for each parcel of the private land and registered in the cadastre data as additional information for estimation of the land tax.

The article presents the research study of the current state and condition of the geodetic base (polygonometric) network for Kaunas city and region as well as the aspects of its compiling. The geodetic base compiled in the post-war years is considered to be of high quality and is used nowadays. The still existing polygonometric network is seldom studied and thus it remains little known. For the purpose of defining the current state of the geodetic base networks, the search for the points in Karmėlava neighbourhood of Kaunas region has been provided. From the total number of 22 points to be searched, five (i.e. 22 percentage) were determined, but only four points (i.e.18 percentage) were appropriate for measurements. The majority of the points has been destroyed during the construction of the residential buildings or roads, or after the reconstruction works. The measurements have been taken by Trimble R6, by RTK method, 10 times for each point. The most reliable value of the measured geodetic points X and Y were defined as well as the errors of the mean square for one measurement and of the average. The results of the survey (100 respondents) showed that the majority of the professionals apply the points of the polygonometric network when making measurements. However, the problems related to a rather rear usage of the network and the aggravated search of the polygonometric points were encountered. A significant part of the professionals suggested the restoration of the polygonometric network.

The aim of the article is to discuss practical issues of establishing the access to land property during the land reform as well as today, and to propose solutions to the identified problems. The methods of research include the analysis of scientific literature and legal acts as well as the case study and the analysis of documents. In this article several proposals are made. It is proposed that the law should include the condition that the establishment of servitudes is allowed only in rural areas and only as an exception if the access from the state or municipal road cannot be granted. The legal solution must be found for the servitudes without the dominant property which have been established during the land reform. The right for local authorities to determine the dominant property should also be considered. The suggestions may be used to elaborate legislative proposals.

The aim of the research was to identify the change of abandoned lands in Ūdrija cadastral area of Alytus district. This particular area was selected due to the diversity of land cover objects and because of a good agrarian condition. According to the data of 2010, the cadastral area of Ūdrija had 176 plots of abandoned land with the total area of 61.41 ha. After the verification 179 plots of a land were found, with the total area of 62.84 ha. It can be said that there is a minor increasing tendency of abandoned lands. During field verification as many as 41 mismatches were identified. The mismatch of the data was influenced by two main factors: a two year period between the information of the data set and field verification, as well as errors of the data set. To sum up, the information of verification has changed slightly. It happened because some mismatches were positive (identified new areas of abandoned land), while others were negative (plots of land which were in a set of data were denied during the verification).

The latest land reform in Latvia has substantially altered the structure of use of farmland leading to a great number of very small and fragmented agricultural holdings, yet, in terms of occupied total area and UAA, medium size (10.0-50.0 ha) and slightly larger (more than 50.0 ha) land holdings dominate. In Latvia the number of agricultural holdings tends to decline. On the contrary, the average UAA per agricultural holding rose (by 66%), reaching 23.2 ha in 2010. One can conclude that positive structural changes take place in the agricultural industry – the number of small farms has declined and the number of and the area farmed by large marketoriented farms has risen, thus the difference between the sizes of land holdings that emerged during the land reform and the land areas farmed by agricultural holdings has increased.

At the moment all three Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – use Baltic Normal Height System 1977 as a national height system. But the European Union regulations declared the European Vertical Reference System as a national height system. For height transformation there is a transformation formula for each European country. After calculations it is seen that height difference between Baltic Normal Height System 1977 and the European Vertical Reference System depends on point location in the territory (coordinates). This unequal height difference between both height systems will cause unequal height values on border connection points between the Baltic countries.

The development of GIS technologies, of Earth remote sensing methods, improvement of the legal basis, as well as differences in approaches of creation and functioning of the cadastral systems puts on the agenda the task of using a unified methodological approach for the creation of the cadastral systems. It is particularly relevant during the period of integration and globalization of economic, sociopolitical, scientific and cultural, educational and other programs of different countries and, especially, of the countries of the European Union. The purpose of this research is to attempt to improve the structure of cadastral system with regard to land parcels registration outlining the main directions of scientific and practical research meant for the modernization of the cadastre. The results of the research are suggestions and recommendations about the possibility of creating a unified register of cadastral objects, land parcels in particular, as well as the list of scientific tasks aimed at the modernization and improvement of the cadastral system. The conclusions show that the cadastre should be regarded as the state informational and registration system of geospatial position of the objects, their quantitative and qualitative assessment and legal status at this stage of development of technical, techno-logical and legal trends. In a scientific sense, the cadastre is a branch of science which studies the patterns and principles of formation, functioning and preservation of cadastral objects, information about them and their register.