IMPACT OF ESTONIAN RURAL LOCAL GOVERNMENTS CAPACITY ON THE ARABLE LAND USE.

The land use pattern is affected by different factors. One group of factors related to studies of land use change are socio-economics. The aim of the study is to test if the various indicators describing local government capacity have any impact on changes in arable land use. The study focuses on Estonian rural municipalities. The first task was determination of land use changes for the period 2009-2015. The GIS overlay technique was implemented for this. The second task was a correlation analysis among indicators of changes in arable land use and indicators of local government capacity. Finally, the construction of multiple regression models was the third task of the study. The overall results show that arable land area has decreased by 14.7% from 2009 to 2015. The results of the correlation analysis show that five components (indicators) of the capacity index had statistically significant correlations with changes in arable land use. According to the multiple regression models those factors described approximately one - fifth of the variation of utilised changes in arable land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]