Regulation and Maintenance Ecosystem Services (ReMES): A Spatial Assessment in the Basilicata Region (Southern Italy)

The current spatial planning system in Italy demonstrates its lack of a data infrastructure so robust, flexible and adaptive to provide adequate performance in the capacity to support the decision-making process. This weakness is manifested even more in the management of the territorial transformations under the pressure of rapid changes involving social, environmental and economic dimensions. The ecosystem services (ES) approach constitutes a robust framework to contribute to the renewal of the planning system by making explicit complex dynamics until now considered only marginally and by introducing spatially explicit knowledge as an effective decision support system (DSS). This work focuses on the class of Regulating and Maintaining Ecosystem Services (ReMES) as it is considered particularly relevant with respect to the ecosystems’ potential of expressing environmental performance and contributing to human well-being. A further characteristic of this class is the often significant mismatch between the spatial scale of the territorial transformations and the (larger) scale at which changes in ES supply are measured. The aim of this work is therefore to represent the spatial distribution of a relevant set of ES in the Basilicata Region (Southern Italy) thus contributing to the development of a cross-sectoral spatial knowledge infrastructure with respect to components still managed within the planning processes in a sectoral and fragmented way. The results highlight the usefulness of such a tool for the comparison between different planning scenarios including both environmental conservation issues and socio-economic development strategies

Mapping Regulation Ecosystem Services Specialization in Italy

Nowadays, land-use planning systems show structural weakness from an informative perspective, depending on the capacity to develop rapidly and accurately territorial knowledge as a decision support system (DSS). The capacity to effectively manage territorial transformations in a sustainability perspective is inadequate, especially under the pressure of rapid changes involving social, environmental, and economic dimensions. We recognize the Ecosystem Services (ES) approach as a robust framework to contribute to the renewal of the planning system by introducing spatially explicit knowledge of both actual environmental performances and the expected impacts related to land-use policies and territorial transformations. In this paper, we address the class of Regulation and Maintenance Ecosystem Services (ReMES) that has a relevant influence on the environment's suitability to contribute to human well-being and to relate the local anthropic transformations to the larger scale where ES are provided and the impacts are tangible. The aim of this work is to propose a methodology to build a territorial knowledge infrastructure by mapping a relevant set of ReMES in Italy and identifying specialization subregions, to be intended as areas of high provision of one or more ReMES. The results, interpretable as a measure of territorial performances, represent a cross-cutting informative layer and a tool to support the comparison between different planning scenarios comprehensive of both environmental protection issues and socioeconomic development strategies

Energy Transition and Spatial Transformation: Looking for a Suitable Trade-Off

The entry of large amounts of funding and the ongoing energy crisis are drivers of large-scale land transformations for which no monitoring plan was framed. Several studies showed that already in the past the uncontrolled development of infrastructure for energy production from renewable sources led to significant environmental impacts, in some cases largely motivated by economic speculation. This paper analyzes the emblematic case study of the Basilicata Region where, since 2006, the number of wind turbines multiplied in the absence of both a monitoring system and a robust planning and programming framework. The paper proposes a spatially explicit methodology to measure the degree of sustainability of land transformations occurred, according to two approaches: ecosystem services, through the analysis of the carbon footprint related to the installation and operation of energy plants; spatial fragmentation, through a density index. The aim is to provide useful indications for addressing investments aimed at repowering existing wind farms in order to improve the overall environmental balance by increasing renewable energy production and minimizing negative environmental effects

An Ecosystem Services-Based Territorial Ranking for Italian Provinces

Cities’ Rankings are increasingly used to compare territorial performances related to different dimensions of well-being or territorial development. In the context of urban and territorial planning, they often contribute to legitimizing governance processes and have a marked influence on the evaluation of the policies’ success. Therefore, even if those analytical practices cannot be considered as robust tools, they express a great potential in terms of communication capacity and as an awareness raising tool. The aim of this work is to combine the concept of ranking with the methodological framework of Ecosystem Services (ES), considered a reference in the evaluation of urban and territorial development components towards sustainability. Based on a spatially explicit assessment of a relevant set of ES, the Multiple Ecosystem Services Landscape Index (MESLI) was assessed for the Italian national territory. The resulting spatial distributed layer was subsequently aggregated in order to obtain a ranking of Italian territories based on the concept of ecosystem multifunctionality. The results show an unexpected representation of the environmental performance of the territorial units, which are markedly affected by the reciprocal relationships between environmental and anthropic components of the territorial system. The conclusions highlight the potential of this synthetic indicator that provides valid arguments for the public debate about sustainability and ecosystem multifunctionality driving the attention of decision makers and citizens on the role of ESs’ value in strategic planning and development. The aims are to stimulate a debate concerning environmental performances and to contribute in increasing the non-experts demand for sustainability in the territorial governance processes

Ecosystem Services for Planning Impacts Assessment on Urban Settlement Development

At global level, land-use changes induced by urban growth processes are considered to be one of the most relevant threats to the conservation of natural habitats, their biodiversity and capacity to provide ecosystem services for human well-being. While in the academic field there is a growing interest in the methodological framework of ecosystem services, in the practice of urban and territorial planning there is a need for new methods and tools to support the assessment of planning choices’ sustainability. The aim of this work is to propose a method to evaluate the effects of expansion forecasts set in the urban plan (PRG) of the Municipality of Perugia. The comparison between the state of art and the forecast scenario highlights the degradation increase especially along the interface between urban settlements and agricultural areas, and the relevant habitat quality decrease in urban green areas and in complex agricultural systems close to built-up areas. In spite of the limitations related to the subjectivity of the parameterization of input values, the approach shows potential for the assessment of urbanization processes and for supporting the evaluation of planning choices

Ghost planning: The inefficiency of energy sector policies in a low population density region

The growing interest in energy sector policies has led to a widespread and dispersed installation of energy production plants in Italy. This occurred due to a “ghost planning system” that operates outside the urban planning policies. Focusing on the evidence of landscape changes due to the installation of energy infrastructures in the Basilicata region we want to measure the impacts of the installation of hydrocarbon wells and renewable energy plants through a SPrinkling IndeX

Natura 2000 areas and sites of national interest (SNI): Measuring (un)integration between naturalness preservation and environmental remediation policies

The Natura 2000 network was established as a tool to preserve the biological diversity of the European territory with particular regard to vulnerable habitats and species. According to recent studies, a relevant percentage of Natura 2000 sites are expected to be lost by the end of this century and there is widespread evidence that biodiversity conservation policies are not fully effective in relation to the management plans of the protected areas. This paper addresses the issue by analyzing a specific case in which there is a problem of integration between different competences and sectoral policies that leads to the lack of a monitoring system of territorial management performances. The study area, located in the Basilicata Region (Southern Italy), includes a Site of National Interest (SNI), for which several reclamation projects are still in the submission/approval phase, and a partially overlapping Natura 2000 network site. The tool used to monitor biodiversity in the study area is the degradation map obtained through the "habitat quality and degradation" InVEST tool which is used to assess the current trend and thus define a baseline for comparison with two medium and long-term scenarios applicable to the SNI's procedure of partial and total remediation. The proposed methodology is intended to be a part of a larger and more complex monitoring system that, developed within the framework of ecosystem services, allows for the overcoming of the limits related to fragmentation and contradictions that are present in land management by offering a valuable support to decision makers and the competent authorities in biodiversity conservation policy design

Soil Ecosystem Services and Sediment Production: The Basilicata Region Case Study

The conservation of soil and multiple ecosystem services it provides, is crucial for human well-being, for pursuing many of the Sustainable Development Goals and for addressing some of the most important challenges of our society. However several factors contribute to soil degradation, including climatic characteristics, lithological and morphological features and transformation processes. Only the last ones can be governed and that is the reason why spatial planning needs tools and analyses to interpret the role of land use changes in complex dynamics such as the erosive phenomena. This work presents the results obtained from the implementation of the InVEST SDR module on the territory of Basilicata Region and considering the evolution occurred between 1990 and 2018. Our outcomes show an intensification of erosion phenomena mainly along the Apennine chain and the coastal area of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Although this area corresponds to the higher average rainfall erosivity over the entire period, the most significant soil loss occurs in correspondence with unfavorable land use changes. The negative connotation typically associated with deforestation, conversion of agricultural soils to arable lands and thinning or total loss of vegetation becomes a measurable quantity, at least from one of several points of view

Assessing urban fragmentation at regional scale using sprinkling indexes

Artificial land use trends could represent an effective indicator of the settlement process quality and could also provide information about the efficacy of protection and exploitation policies in natural and rural areas. This work discusses an analytic procedure for the time series investigation of urban settlement development at the regional scale to verify the nexus between urban growth and demographic trends connected with the phenomenon of land take. In Italy, since 1950, the land take phenomenon has been a consequence of several factors: urbanization, realization of transport infrastructures including ports, airports, and highways, and the enhancement of industrial and productive systems. We analyzed all these territorial transformations that create waterproof soil, and more generally, a transition from natural and semi-natural uses toward artificial land use. AfterWorldWar II, the demographic growth and the consequent housing demand generated a strong urbanization process in the main poles of economic development areas in Italy. Since the early 2000s, the situation has completely changed and the land take phenomenon is no longer mainly based on real need for new urban expansion areas based on effective urban planning tools, but is strongly related to a scattered demand for new housing in a weak territorial spatial planning system not able to drive effective urban development that minimizes speculative real estate initiatives. This uncontrolled occupation of soil generated, in Italy, a landscape fragmentation called the urban sprinkling phenomenon, different from urban sprawl, which is a wider phenomenon characterized by disordered urban growth. The present document aims to assess how uncontrolled expansion in areas characterized by low settlement density can generate fragmentation. To define if the territory is affected by the urban sprinkling phenomenon, two 50-year time series concerning urban expansion of buildings and demographic trends are analyzed calculating population and building density indices and their variation over the years. The sprinkling index is used to analyze the variation in the fragmentation degree at two different scales (regional and municipal). Finally, we discuss the context where this phenomenon has developed, analyzing the buildings located in hydrogeological risk zones and protected areas, and the correlation between demographic changes and the degree of territorial fragmentation variation