Monitoring of land consumption and soil sealing as a contribution to sustainable spatial development in Bavaria

Abstract

In the federal state of Bavaria, there is currently intensive discussion on how land consumption for settlement and transport purposes can be reduced in the long term. In order to provide a solid scientific basis for steering instruments in urban and regional development, the official land use monitoring should be improved by including also the qualitative and structural dimension of land consumption in addition to existing official statistics and their main indicator ‘settlement and traffic area’. For this purpose, the paper presents methodological extensions, which show small-scale analyses of urban sprawl, open space structure, soil sealing and ecosystem services using the example of the district of Rhön-Grabfeld. These methodological extensions are discussed in the context of the relevant debates on the causes and steering of land consumption as well as on current requirements for land use monitoring, emphasising their importance for the monitoring of legal guidelines and political objectives on sustainable land use.