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.