In general, the elaboration of the synthesis of water quality in Romania is based on the processing of a large volume of information coming from primary analytical data collected with a constant frequency by the organisms with a specific role in water quality monitoring. This study proposes a novel methodology for multi-criteria analysis aiming to evaluate the degradation state of lake ecosystems. The cornerstone of the newly presented methodology is a geographic information system (GIS) automated tool, involving the assessment of potential degradation sources affecting the watershed that supply the lakes with water. The methodology was tested by performing an analysis on 30 lakes in Romania. The lakes belong to different geographical areas, owing various natural specific conditions and were selected to fit to various types and specific local conditions. The calculation of the WRASTIC-HI (Wastewater–Recreation–Agriculture–Size–Transportation–Industry–Cover–Hazard Index) revealed that, out of 30 lake ecosystems selected as the case study, two lakes were fully degraded, 24 lakes were semi-degraded, and four were in a natural state. The four lakes characterised by a natural state are located in mountainous regions or in the Danube Delta. The results obtained on the selected lakes proved that the proposed index calculation corresponded in all case studies to the real field situation, highlighting thus the accuracy of the assessing process and increased advantages of the assessment’s automation.

Maintaining and increasing landscape connectivity, especially of forest landscapes, are some of the main concerns regarding biodiversity conservation. The connectivity of protected areas for different species represents an indicator for evaluating the effectiveness of the Natura 2000 network. Our research aims to evaluate the connectivity of forest landscapes in the Romanian Alpine Biogeographical Region (ABR) for various terrestrial species. We analysed the distribution of forest patches and Sites of Community Importance (SCI), as part of Natura 2000 network, in the Romanian ABR. We evaluated the connectivity of forest patches for terrestrial species with different dispersal distances, identifying those patches with significant contribution to maintain the forest landscape connectivity, through the graph theory approach. To quantify the importance of each node, we evaluated the dPCconnector fraction derived from the dPC index. Of the 125 SCIs in the Romanian ABR, 71 protected areas have over 1000 ha, four of them have more than 100,000 ha. The total protected surfaces cover ~35% of the Romanian ABR, and the forest surfaces, protected in SCIs, cover 26% of the total Romanian ABR. Regarding the connectivity scores, we found that the forest surfaces across the ABR are well connected (0.89 or 1 for different dispersal distances) in comparison with the Natura 2000 forest patches. The forest patches are well connected especially for the species with large dispersal distance in both cases (d = 25 km). For the species characterized by a small dispersion distance, the connectivity is lower (0.46) in the case of protected forests. Our results evidence that the connectivity objective of the forest surfaces protected through the Nature 2000 network is not totally achieved. Furthermore new protected areas are needed where the forest are still present for increasing landscape connectivity for species.

Grassland habitat degradation intensified in the last century worldwide and in Europe. In Romania, substantial areas of biodiverse grassland habitats that persisted due to small-scale farming are now threatened by recent land-use intensification. However, data regarding the deviation from grazing optimum, essential for management plans encompassing both socioeconomic sustainability and environment conservation, are not yet available. To fill this gap, detailed statistics of the stocking rate and its deviation from optimum were generated by spatial modeling techniques. A toolbox was developed to assess such deviations inside or outside the Natura 2000 Network of protected areas. The analysis covered an area of 33529.42 km2, corresponding to all the Romanian permanent grasslands within the land parcel identification system. The results indicate that over half of this area is degraded, mostly from overgrazing. Less than 10% is not impacted by inadequate livestock density. Of the national grassland area, 17.34% is included within the Natura 2000 protected sites, indicating the substantial overlapping of agricultural and protection activities. For this category, the degraded area is slightly lower than at the national level (50.34% vs. 52.45%). These results can be applied for environmental conflict anticipation and optimal management of grassland habitats to achieve both socioeconomic and conservation objectives.

The study aims at establishing an integrated method for the analysis of urban functional and spatial disparities induced by the structure and functional zoning of urban space. The study area is represented by an urban territorial unit of 90 000 square meters situated in the central area of Craiova. Computer-based cartographic conversion from satellite images provides the general metric scale of the analyzed territory. At this stage, the scientific approach is concerned with the elaboration and use of two metric indexes in order to calculate the functional fragmentation within the reference perimeter. There are presented criteria for the delimitation of functional zones by taking into account the predominant function of individually assessed perimeters. Furthermore, metric data is analyzed by the use of relative functional fragmentation index (RFf) and absolute functional fragmentation index (AFf). Recorded parameters are compared to the optimum values of space fragmentation in order to point out the functional and spatial disparities of urban space. The method can be easily used for the analysis of functional fragmentation of any urban areas or as part of more complex urban studies. It can also constitute a useful tool for territorial planning, better balance of urban territory and modification of functional units in order to meet specific standards in the economy of urban land us

To meet the global challenges of climate change and human activity pressure on biodiversity conservation, it has become vital to map such pressure hotspots. Large areas, such as nation-wide regions, are difficult to map from the point of view of the resources needed for such mapping (human resources, hard and soft resources). European biodiversity policies have focused on restoring degraded ecosystems by at least 10% by 2020, and new policies aim to restore up to 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030. In this study, methods developed and applied for the assessment of the degradation state of the ecosystems in a semi-automatic manner for the entire Romanian territory (238,391 km²) are presented. The following ecosystems were analyzed: forestry, grassland, rivers, lakes, caves and coastal areas. The information and data covering all the ecoregions of the Romania (~110,000 km²) were analyzed and processed, based on GIS and remote sensing techniques. The largest degraded areas were identified within the coastal area (49.80%), grassland ecosystems (38.59%) and the cave ecosystems (2.66%), while 27.64% of rivers ecosystems were degraded, followed by 8.52% of forest ecosystems, and 14.05% of lakes ecosystems. This analysis can contribute to better definition of the locations of the most affected areas, which will yield a useful spatial representation for future ecological reconstruction strategy.

The present study represents a social and geographical analysis of the spatial distribution of pharmacies in Craiova city using GIS methods. This study aims to present the evolution in the pharmacies’ number, location, density and accessibility to the population of Craiova city on the background of an analysis of European and national legislation concerning the pharmaceutical sector. The paper also outlines the uneven distribution of pharmacies in the city by analysing the ratio between the number of pharmacies and the number of people within a district. Distance and time are considered important, especially when using different transport types. Indicators like density of pharmacies, distribution of population density, and population size in districts were taken into account in this study. Although the GIS-based analysis revealed that accessibility of pharmacies in terms of time and distance and the ratio of population size to number of pharmacies were both good and had increased over the years, the study also indicated residential areas with no pharmacy, and therefore an uneven distribution of pharmaceutical services.