## 4 Discussion
### Dynamics of Forest Cover
The change in forest cover from the forest area, when analyzed separately, does not reflect the size of forest areas, only their dynamics in relation to it. This is valuable information, but it can be quite misleading if other factors are not taken into account. Figure 26 shows the substantiation of this statement with the example of Juodaiciai edership. It can be seen that the forest area was quite large in the 19 th century and occupied 49.8% (over 1500 ha) of the area of the edership. The estimated 92.3% of the total forest area was lost by the 1 st half of the 20 th century and the forest occupied 3.8% of the eldership area. The area of the forest increased by as much as 359.4% from the former area (it reached over 500 ha) from the 1 st half of the 20 th century to the 2 nd half of the 20 th century, and  
Figure 25: Forest areas present during the 19 th–20 th centuries. the forest cover made up 17.6% of the area of the eldership. Thus, with an increase in forest cover by more than 300% with respect to the forest area, this seemingly large increase is not significant with respect to the eldership area. Analysis of the 19 th-century maps shows that the boundaries of forests are natural, not limited by the outlines of geometric shapes. The boundaries of the forests acquired rather strict outlines in the 1 st and 2 nd halves of the 20 th century; the increasing influence of anthropogenic impact on forest areas and the outlines of their boundaries can be seen. The areas of falling are recorded in the maps only during a certain time, and as can be seen from the analysis of the expansion/diminishing of forest areas, they do not reflect the entire trend of forest area change. This is especially evident when forest areas diminished in a very short period of time (during World War I). However, this information makes it possible to observe the trends of forest destruction/planting over the period being documented--a general analysis of the change in forest areas and studying forest areas documented at a certain moment allows us to see how much they have expanded or diminished. The areas of forest filling documented at a certain time allow us to observe the falling that took place at that time and to draw conclusions as to whether the forests were intensively felled at that time. A complex analysis of forest trees by age can also help understand these trends. The forest areas determined from the maps and their dynamics allow us to say that there would not have been any forest left in Jurbarkas District around 2006 if filling had continued at the same pace as in the 19 th century-1 st half of the 20 th century. Lithuania was affected by factors of external origin, which led to the fact that at a certain point in the 1 st half of the 20 th century, the rate of destruction of forest cover areas increased sharply, and the largest increase in forest areas occurred in the middle of the 20 th century, not in the 21 st century, when the EU took measures to manage climate change processes. No changes in legislation or green course-oriented policy guidelines for the 21 st century led to such a large increase in forest areas as turmoil, population decline, and abandonment of areas previously used for agriculture that took place in the middle of the 20 th century. These trends are characteristic of Eastern European countries, which were affected by the same political processes [50; 59]. After analyzing the data and maps, it can be concluded that the current forest areas with minor changes were inherited from the 2 nd half of the 20 th century. Eastern Europe also experienced a series of social, economic, and institutional up-heavals in the 20 th century, including revolutions, wars, and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, all of which led to major changes in land use. Therefore, the factors influencing the change in forest cover in the region, due to the major political, and socioeconomic changes that have taken place in the region, are somewhat different in their impact from those in Western Europe [61]:  
1.