A quantitative measure of habitat quality to support the implementation of sustainable urban planning measures

The 2030 Agenda by United Nations highlights the necessity of undertake concrete actions to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat deser-tification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”. However, human activities on land use are strongly threatening habitat quality, causing their fragmentation and a dramatic loss of biodiversity all over the world. This paper proposes an application of the InVEST Habitat Quality model as a tool to support the definition of sustainable development policies able to favour the preservation of habitat structures while promoting their exploitation as cultural and landscape assets. The model is applied to the Basilicata Region (Southern Italy). Results show how modelling the impacts of human activities on biodiversity and ecosystem services can strongly help planning activities in distinguish those areas that should undergo to a conservation regime to preserve habitat integrity from those which are most prone to transformations, taking advantage by the social and economic benefit deriving from the human activities connected to their use.