**5. Conclusions**

The annual land-use changes in Lithuanian municipalities were identified for the period 1971–2015 using sampling-based information from the Lithuanian National Forest Inventory. Originally developed to support strategic forest planning with data, the Lithuanian NFI was recently adopted to monitor land-use changes. We demonstrate its usability to explore land use and land-use change properties. Lithuania, being a relatively small lowland country, exhibits statistically significant spatial patterns in land use and land-use change distribution. Since 1971, the area of land uses important for carbon storage (forest, producing land, and meadow/pasture) was similar—20–37% each. Since then, the proportion of producing land, forest, and built-up areas did increase, while the proportions of meadows and pastures, wetlands, and other lands went down. The area of forest, wetlands, built-up areas, and other land changed relatively steadily over the last five decades. However, the trends of changes in producing land and meadow/pasture depended on the historical period, being associated with historical periods impacted by political processes in and around land managemen<sup>t</sup> and use relationships. The proportions of producing land and pasture/meadow remained spatially autocorrelated during the whole period analysed. Local spatial clusters and outliers were identified for all land-use types at each time point analysed, suggesting the need for spatially explicit land-use managemen<sup>t</sup> policies.

Exploiting the information from publicly available GIS and agricultural census databases, we managed to explain, using multiple linear regression, up to 65% of the variance in forest, 40% in producing land, and 37% in meadow/pasture proportion changes over the entire period of 1971–2015. The regression models usually improved with shorter time periods for producing land and meadow/pasture proportion changes. Usually, the factors shaping the changes in the proportions of forest and meadow/pasture were similar, but different from those affecting producing land changes. We associated the trends in land-use changes and the models explaining them with the interactions of political, natural, and social systems.

We also conclude that a spatially explicit assessment of the land-use pattern can identify critical areas of land-use change and give insight to improve land managemen<sup>t</sup> policies and associated decisions. More specifically, in order to increase carbon absorption, it is necessary to know the processes involved in the development of land surface layers and land use and to have solutions in hand to manage these processes. This can be achieved by assessing land-use development in Lithuania, with particular attention to the determinants of land use, understanding methodological principles for land-use development modelling. Wall-to-wall maps of land uses, developed at the compatible spatial and temporal resolutions using data in the Lithuanian National Forest Inventory, could help to improve both the evaluation of land-use status and the prediction of changes.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, D.J. and G.M.; methodology, D.J. and G.M.; software, D.J. and G.M.; validation, G.M.; formal analysis, D.J. and G.M.; writing—original draft preparation, G.M., D.J. and V.K.; writing—review and editing, J.V. and V.A.; visualization, G.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Data available on request.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
