The last few decades have shown a reorientation of the geographical research towards the complex study of the geographical landscape. During the years the natural surfaces got smaller and smaller (they were replaced by agricultural or artificial surfaces) and the vegetation suffered major transformations from the structure and composition point of view. The purpose of this paper is the elaboration, with Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques, according to CORINE methodology, of the landscape spatial distribution map of Southern Bărăgan Field. The area of study, the Southern Bărăgan Field, is located in South-Eastern part of Romanian Plain, between Ialomiţa river to North, Mostiştea river to West, Borcea Branch and Danube to East and South. The relief is represented by a tabular plain, “bărăgan” type, with temperate continental climate, fertile soils as chernozems, and herbaceous vegetation associations. The inventory of the landscapes of the Southern Bărăgan Field was based on CORINE Land Cover (CLC) method presented in the “Addendum 2000”) by the European Environment Agency (EPA). As a basis for analyzing landscapes we used some of the parameters derived from Digital Elevation Model of Terrain (DEMT) and the soil map. The DEMT has been obtained from 1:25,000 scale topographic map, through the following steps: - scanning and georeferencing the topographical map; - digitizing the scanned maps; - interpolation of sampling points with the help of the Topo to Raster functions from the ArcGIS 9.2. By analyzing the way land is used in the Southern Bărăgan Field, we identified the following types of landscapes: artificial surfaces, arable land, permanent crops, grass-land, heterogenous agricultural areas, forests, shrubs and herbaceous vegetation associations, wetlands and sandy areas. The report between anthropogenic landscapes and natural landscapes in the Southern Bărăgan Field tilts in favour of the first one. Correlating this map with the morphometric parameters and the pedological characteristics we emphasize the major features of the anthropogenic landscapes and the transformation suffered by the natural vegetation.

cernisoil; loess; Southern Bărăgan

Presentation: oral