SPATIAL ANALYSES AND REMOTE SENSING FOR LAND COVER CHANGE DYNAMICS: ASSESSING IN A SPATIAL PLANNING

ABSTRACT (EN) Spatial planning is a crucial discipline for the identification and implementation of sustainable development strategies that take into account the environmental impacts on the soil. In recent years, the significant development of technology, like remote sensing and GIS software, has significantly increased the understanding of environmental components, highlighting their peculiarities and criticalities. Geographically referenced information on environmental and socio-economic components represents a fundamental database for identifying and monitoring vulnerable areas, also distinguishing different levels of vulnerability. This is even more relevant considering the increasingly significant impact of land transformation processes, consisting of rapid and frequent changes in land use patterns. In order to achieve some of the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda, the role of environmental planning is crucial in addressing spatial problems, such as agricultural land abandonment and land take, which cause negative impacts on ecosystems. Remote sensing, and in general all Earth Observation techniques, play a key role in achieving SDG 11.3 and 15.3 of Agenda 2030. Through a series of applications and investigations in different areas of Basilicata, it has been demonstrated how the extensive use of remote sensing and spatial analysis in a GIS environment provide a substantial contribution to the results of the SDGs, enabling an informed decisionmaking process and enabling monitoring of the results expected, ensuring data reliability and directly contributing to the calculation of SDG objectives and indicators by facilitating local administrations approaches to work in different development and sustainability sectors. In this thesis have been analyse the dynamics of land transformation in terms of land take and soil erosion in sample areas of the Basilicata Region, which represents an interesting case example for the study of land use land cover change (LULCC). The socio-demographic evolutionary trends and the study of marginality and territorial fragility are fundamental aspects in the context of territorial planning, since they are important drivers of the LULCC and territorial transformation processes. In fact, in Basilicata, settlement dynamics over the years have occurred in an uncontrolled and unregulated manner, leading to a constant consumption of land not accompanied by adequate demographic and economic growth. To better understand the evolution and dynamics of the LULCCs and provide useful tools for formulating territorial planning policies and strategies aimed at a sustainable use of the territory, the socio-economic aspects of the Region were investigated. A first phase involved the creation of a database and the study and identification of essential services in the area as a fundamental parameter against which to evaluate the quality of life in a specific area. The supply of essential services can be understood as an assessment of the lack of minimum requirements with reference to the urban functions exercised by each territorial unit. From a territorial point of view, the level of peripherality of the territories with respect to the network of urban centres profoundly influences the quality of life of citizens and the level of social inclusion. In these, the presence of essential services can act as an attractor capable of generating discrete catchment areas. The purpose of this first part of the work was above all to create a dataset of data useful for the calculation of various socio-economic indicators, in order to frame the demographic evolution and the evolution of the stock of public and private services. The first methodological approach was to reconstruct the offer of essential services through the use of open data in a GIS environment and subsequently estimate the peripherality of each municipality by estimating the accessibility to essential services. The study envisaged the use of territorial analysis techniques aimed at describing the distribution of essential services on the regional territory. It is essential to understand the role of demographic dynamics as a driver of urban land use change such as, for example, the increase in demand for artificial surfaces that occurs locally. Social and economic analyses are important in the spatial planning process. Comparison of socio-economic analyses with land use and land cover change can highlight the need to modify existing policies or implement new ones. A particular land use can degrade and thereby destroy other land resources. If the economic analysis shows that the use is beneficial from the point of view of the land user, it is likely to continue, regardless of whether the process is environmentally friendly. It is important to understand and investigate which drivers have been and will be in the future the most decisive in these dynamics that intrinsically contribute to land take, agricultural abandonment and the consequent processes of land degradation and to define policies or thresholds to mitigate and monitor the effects of these processes. Subsequently, the issues of land take and abandonment of agricultural land were analysed by applying models and techniques of remote sensing, GIS and territorial analysis for the identification and monitoring of abandoned agricultural areas and sealed areas. The classic remote sensing methods have also been integrated by some geostatistical analyses which have provided more information on the investigated phenomenon. The aim was the creation of a quick methodology that would allow to describe the monitoring and analysis activities of the development trends of soil consumption and the monitoring and identification of degraded areas. The first methodology proposed allowed the automatic and rapid detection of detailed LULCC and Land Take maps with an overall accuracy of more than 90%, reducing costs and processing times. The identification of abandoned agricultural areas in degradation is among the most complicated LULCC and Land Degradation processes to identify and monitor as it is driven by a multiplicity of anthropic and natural factors. The model used to estimate soil erosion as a degradation phenomenon is the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE). To identify potentially degraded areas, two factors of the RUSLE have been correlated: Factor C which describes the vegetation cover of the soil and Factor A which represents the amount of potential soil erosion. Through statistical correlation analysis with the RUSLE factors, on the basis of the deviations from the average RUSLE values and mapping of the areas of vegetation degradation, relating to arable land, through statistical correlation with the vegetation factor C, the areas were identified and mapped that are susceptible to soil degradation. The results obtained allowed the creation of a database and a map of the degraded areas to be paid attention to.