Class-Resolved Land-Cover Resistance of Peri-Urban Green Infrastructure in the Krakow Metropolitan Fringe

Abstract

Green infrastructure in peri-urban areas may be assessed according to various criteria like green-area quantity, accessibility, or sustainability class. Such indicators prove valuable, however, the difference between convertible and resilient land remains overlooked. This paper studies Krakow’s peri-urban fringe based on land-use composition within five sustainability classes defined for each of the 2313 hexagonal cells in the assessment system. The aim was to identify sustainability classes that feature both significant proportion of space and land use configuration that increases vulnerability of green infrastructural assets. Additionally, the effect of a modest arable-permanent grassland land-use exchange is estimated on those two classes that exhibit relatively higher susceptibility to change. The five classes under study have 1095 fields each (which constitutes 47.34% of the total number of fields), while very high and high classes account for 615 fields apiece (totaling 26.59%). Ordinal state is equal to 2.81, while ordinal sustainability burden stands at 0.547. In the very low class, arable land covers 74%, built-up – 11%, permanent grassland – 10% and no forest; therefore, its exposure-resilience ratio comes up to 8.50. For very high class arable land occupies 16%, built-up – 3%, permanent grassland – 18% and forest – 58%; hence, it gets an exposure-resilience ratio equal to 0.25. The low class is primarily responsible for vulnerability since it involves 36.62% of the total number of fields, exposes 73% to conversion and scores the transition-priority value of 0.200. With 20% arable-permanent grassland reallocation, the ratio of the very low class drops from 8.50 to 2.83, and that of the low class decreases from 3.48 to 1.78.