Restoring biodiversity in a highly-intensive touristic urban area: a case study in the City of Matera (Southern Italy).

Cities play a considerable role in landscape protection and global biodiversity conservation. They comprise several habitat types, from remnant patches of native vegetation, urban wastelands, gardens, yards, etc., to highly engineered green infrastructures, such as green walls/roofs and bioswales. Landscape planners are increasingly aware about the need to re-connect, through the urban-rural gradient, the endangered urban biodiversity with the surrounding natural areas. This need is even more urgent in case of urban settlements experiencing a remarkable growth in their population due to a heavy increase of tourism flows. This is the case of the City of Matera (Southern Italy), an UNESCO site currently selected as the European Cultural Capital 2019, which is facing an impressive growth in tourism population and relevant services. Hosting a Site of Community Importance, as well as a Special Protection Area, this city urgently needs suitable actions aimed to plan and manage its Urban Green Spaces (UGS), i.e., urban green areas finalized to provide ecological, environmental, recreational and economic benefits, restoring its environmental resilience. In this paper, the actual UGS surfaces in Matera have been quantified with multi-source data and GIS tools, and the pattern assessed through specific landscape metrics, implementing a Decision Support System (DSS).