EN
Every year official data on forest area in Poland is published by the Statistics Poland. Some of this data is based on land use information contained in the Land and Property Registry (LPR). The aim of this study was to examine compliance between forest areas obtained from official land use maps and from aerial photos. Another purpose was to investigate the impact of forest complexes fragmentation on the accuracy of forests area evaluation, using land use data. The Łódź voivodeship was selected as the study area and 280 sample plots (1 km²) were established in systematic 8×8 km grid on aerial photos. Forest areas were manually inventoried using GIS software and compared with LPR maps. In the next step inventoried forests were combined into complexes using spatial analysis. The results from this study demonstrate that 3,4% of the Łódź voivodeship is covered by forest vegetation on lands not recorded as a forest in the LPR. Therefore real value of forest area is possibly higher than those based upon data published by Statistics Poland. Additionally, the part of lands with forest vegetation not recorded as a forest in LPR in total forest area has a statistical relationship with forest complex fragmentation. Much of inventoried forest complexes (41%) officially are not considered as such because of different land use record in LPR. However, our research shows that most of them (given area not the number of objects) is located in forest complexes partly recorded in LPR with correct land use record.