Làszlò Pàsztor
Research Institute for Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, GIS Lab, H-1022 Budapest, Herman Ottó út 15. , Hungary, tel (36-1) 356-3694, fax (36-1) 355-8839, lacus@rissac.hu

Simon T. D. Turner
ADAS International, Oxford Spires Business Park, OX5 1NZ, England, U.K., tel (44) 1902-693126, fax (44) 1902-693166, Simon_Turner@adas.co.uk

Jòzsef Szabo
Research Institute for Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, GIS Lab, H-1022 Budapest, Herman Ottó út 15. , Hungary, tel (36-1) 356-3694, fax (36-1) 355-8839, james@rissac.hu

Tibor Tullner
Geological Institute of Hungary, H-1143 Budapest, Stefánia út 14., Hungary, tel (36-1) 251-0999, fax (36-1) 251-0703, tullner@mafi.hu

Abstract

Present paper demonstrates technical problems and their solution emerged during the compilation of first draft Environmental Conflict Maps (ECM) in Hungary. The development of a methodology elaborated for a pilot area, and the produced ECMs themselves are presented. In developing this ECMs, local knowledge, that captures and identifies existing environmental problems, was integrated with agri-environmental spatial databases. Various input information sources, their spatial and/or thematic compatibility/incompatibility, data availability, spatial analysis are presented and discussed. Definition of and examples for direct and indirect conflicts are demonstrated.

INTRODUCTION

The Integrated GIS of the Ministry of Environment and Regional Policy of Hungary (MERP) laid the foundation of a standard environment and user interface for environmental data management first of all in Thematic Information Centres (TICs) and other regional authorities of the Ministry. The completion of this project brought up the necessity to provide this kernel system with extensions furnishing ministerial authorities decision-making tools for environmental management and state of the environmental assessment. The ECM methodology is regarded as one of the cornerstones of these extensions facilitating the understanding, assessment, as well as the mitigation and/or elimination of environmental conflicts occurring as a result of the interaction of socio-economic and natural factors.
The purpose of compiling ECMs upon standard methodology within the framework of the related subproject can be summarised as follows:

• identification of the users of the related data
• identification of conflicting environmental factors
• raising public awareness on the gravity of the issue
• assessing the need, feasibility and format of communication links between TICs and municipalities
• setting up an evaluation scheme supporting complex assessment of different factors
• full compatibility with the Integrated GIS of the MERP
• harmonisation with EU standards and priorities.

Definition of environmental conflicts and their management is a sophisticated issue considering both the complexity of interacting factors and local and regional organisations involved in their evaluation. The possibility of working up a standard method is further impeded by the multitude of local factors specific for the regarded geographic area. It was thus necessary to involve a broad range of regional and local experts possessing professional knowledge in handling these problems.

PILOT PROJECT

In order to present a practical case study of ECM methodology, a pilot area was selected along the NE shore of Lake Balaton. It represents an appr. 5 km wide belt amounting to appr. 100 km2. Selection of this area was based on the following aspects:

• it is considered as the most important recreation area and tourist target in Hungary ;

• it is affected by a number of factors providing sources to environmental conflicts;

• availability of a number of thematic data necessary for complex evaluation.

DEFINITIONS

Despite the broad range of factors acting in environmental conflicts it is necessary to provide its explicit definition as well as to distinguish between direct conflicts occurring invariably as a result of a well-defined pollution load on a target surface and indirect conflicts always related to actual or foreseen modification of the land use pattern. Environmental problem can be defined as damage or threat causing damage to the quality of the environment.

• Environmental Conflict: within and/or between spatial and/or temporal coincidence of environmental pressure (pollution, /threshold of land and susceptibility of target surface) and/or general environmental elements which is recently and/or might prove to be in the future disturbing or harmful for the receptor (actual- and future state of landuse).
• Direct conflict: between pollution load and susceptibility of target surface.
• Indirect conflict: between suitability for a human induced environmental management and actual/future state land use/management.

ELEMENTS OF ECM GIS

Huge work was invested in the collection of all relevent data for the pilot area. Compromising between data requirements and availability proved to be the greatest challenge. Finally the following dataset was set up.
Topography is represented by the followings:

• DTM with a cell size of 50 meters,
• Road, railway, water network.
• Lake Balaton is represented by a further theme.
• Watersheds of Balaton represent also a poligon theme.

In addition to the topography of pilot area

• Country border of Hungary and
• Main rivers of the country are added as a background.

Figure 1
Some quick views on ECM ArcView project file

• A satellite image theme covers the majority of the pilot area. Involvment of further remotely sensed data was hindered due to their high cost. Actually, land cover information of (CORINE; see later) is also based on satellite imagery.

• Information on soil is represented by the polygon theme AGROTOPO. AGROTOPO is a soil information system on Hungarian soils in a scale of 1:100.000. Its mapping units (agroecological units) are characterized with nine different attributes.

• Information on geology is also represented by one theme. An expert system based value characterizing the vulnerability of the geological environment is involved in the ECM methodology.

• Information on land cover is also represented by one theme. Land cover categories are given with a code of three digits where the first two digits refer to two further, higher level categorization of actual land cover.

• A raster was filled up by local municipal experts. Environmental impact categories were determined upon the experience of EU and Hungarian studies but considering the Sofia priorities and the 5th Environmental Action Program as well. Moreover, they indicated conflicting land use schemes occurring in their area and made a summary of the major problems occupying them. The specified criteria (namely 15 different factors) were to be classified and indicated by the municipalities for each cell of the raster on a scale ranging between 0-4. The spatial resolution of the raster is 500x500 meters inside settlements and 1000x1000 meters around settlements. This local knowledge based information is shared in four individual themes. Data were provided for settlements and outer regions for low and high (touristic) season.

• TIC data involves two kind of information:

• sub-catchments of Lake Balaton as a polygon theme without any important attribute furthermore only three of them are touched by the pilot area.
• potential and/or actual polluter sites within pilot area as a point theme with a huge number of descriptive data, which includes detailed information on industrial and communal waste depositories, 75 are lying inside the pilot area.

ECM ArcView project collects all relevant and available data for Balaton pilot area in one session. In one hand this project is highly suitable for computer demonstrations of the data collection activities, on the other hand it also represents the starting point of any spatial analysis carried out based on the ECM database in order to achive ECM’s.

SAMPLE ECMs

Sample ECMs are stored in various ArcView project files. These files originate from ECM project file. They are supported with ArcView extension: Spatial Analyst for the execution of spatial analysis. Unrelevant data layers are deleted, new themes created either as auxiliary themes or ECM results. A final softcopy map as a layout is always compiled.

1. Groundwater vulnerability under TIC censused sites
The vulnerability of the geological environment is of outstanding importance in accelerating or preventing the progress of pollution in groundwater and deep subsurface water horizons. The various geological factors determine the capacity of preventing the migration of pollution into subsurface water tables. TICs are responsible to collect information on pollutants/potential pollutants: location, ownership, cadaster emission data, amount of processed and produced hazardous waste, site and state of communal waste depositories. Potential and/or actual polluters situated over locations with higher hazard of pollution vulnerability should be treated/checked more seriously. Consequently, a co-evaulation, spatial analysis of the conflicting environmental factors should be carried out to get a complex picture on groundwater vulnerability endangered by TIC censused sites.
An expert system based methodology of pollution vulnerability assessment subdivides the considered area into 4 classes according to the combination of three geological factors High, medium and low vulnerability classes are defined considering the capacity of preventing the migration of pollution. TIC censused sites were categorized according to their profiles into two groupes: sites producing or not hazardous waste with risk to subsurface water tables. Sites belonging to the former class then were further classified according to their geographical location within the various geology based vulnerability categories. Sites are ranked as ones with high, low or no hazard of subsurface pollution. The output ECM entitled ‘Groundwater vulnerability under TIC censused sites’ is displayed in Fig. 2.

Figure 2
Sample ECM: Groundwater vulnerability under TIC censused sites

2. Impact of traffic on Natural Conservation
Territory of Balaton National Park covers major part of northern Balaton region, consequently there is high overlap with the present ECM pilot area. Balaton region is also characterized as tourist attraction which requires infrustructural background: road and railway network. Noise and pollution of the traffic network conflicts with the functions of National Park, parts of National Park close to elements of traffic network are less valuable and strongly exposed to damages than farther areas. The co-evaulation, spatial analysis of the conflicting environmental factors gives a complex picture on status of Balaton National Park endangered by traffic caused impacts.
Impact of environmental elements represented as line features was modelled using buffering techniques. Buffering generally means creating a polygon around spatial objects with a given radius. Spatial Analyst modul of ArcView however provided a more sophisticated opportunity. According to the distance of the elements of a grid from a spatial unit grid, cells were classified; thus the whole territory was characterized with one operation. Co-evaulation of buffer zones resulting from railway and road system and further merging with spatial extension of National Park then provided vulnerability classification of Balaton National Park. The output ECM entitled ‘Impact of traffic on Natural Conservation’ is displayed in Fig. 3.

Figure 3
Sample ECM: Impact of traffic on Natural Conservation

3. Overall perception on state of local environment
Simultaneous environmental impacts sum up in overall perception on state of environment in human mind. Too much load results in bad perception, which is a conflict in itself. This situation can be treated as a ‘polarized’ conflict where is no other component, but any, even the slightest, potential negative change in state of environment results in real conflicts. Highly impacted sites are ‘preconflict’ areas.
Values for specific environmental elements provided by municipalities for pilot area raster were summed up. Since high value for a given factor means bad feeling on state of environment, higher the summed up value the more the environmental impact within a given raster cell. Actually, summarizing category values representing as different factors involved in data collection can be judged at the first sight. Nevertheless overthinking the procedure it can be concluded that the result does give an indication about the state of local environment. The output ECM entitled ‘Overall perception on state of local environment’ is displayed in Fig. 4.

Figure 4
Sample ECM: Overall perception on state of local environment

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Present work was carried out in the frame of PHARE project No. HU 9402-01-01-L2. Authors are grateful to the Ministry of Environment and Regional Policy and Environmental Protection and Thematic Information Center at Székesfehérvár for their technical assistance. Special thanks to Zsófia Bakacsi, Zsuzsanna Flachner, Kálmán Rajkai and Balázs Zágoni.