Multi-temporal analysis of vernacular farm buildings and rural landscape through historical cartography and 3-D GIS

Farm buildings, designed over the centuries in order to fulfil their primary agricultural goal, now often constitute a widespread heritage of vernacular constructions, endowed with an unreplaceable architectural value. Together with the concurrent action of natural events, human interventions and changes in natural cycles, they play indeed a central role in shaping the rural landscape. In this paper, thanks to the use of a Geographic Information System in which historical cartography, aerial photos and other ancillary dataset have been implemented, the land use of the area of “Monte Vulture and Monticchio lakes” and its environmental components have been investigated through a 3-D modelling of the relevant rural landscape and its main features. This area, located in the Basilicata Region (southern Italy), is one territory with a great scenic interest, having been recognized as a landscape heritage thanks to some specific cultural and historical elements. This rural landscape also includes – similar as many other Italian rural landscapes - some vernacular constructions having a high historical and architectural value, that have contributed to create this traditional rural landscape. The analysis has involved a multi-temporal comparison of the vernacular constructions located in the study area, so as to evaluate the built heritage evolution in the framework of its rural landscape, as well as its interactions with the surrounding territory. With this aim, the historical reconstruction of the landscape before and after the year 1900 has been conducted through implementing digital terrain models enriched by draping land cover pictures over them. The results which have been obtained enabled an evaluation in a scenic way of the morphological and vegetation variations during time of the rural landscape, allowing a virtual “time jump” back to periods when digital aerial photography was not yet existing. Thanks to these new technologies, able to exploit information included into old cartographic supports, some suitable tools have been then developed, skilled to support the sustainable planning and management of rural built heritage, enabling an analysis of their possible valorisation for cultural tourism purposes as well.