Land Use Change Evaluation in an Open-Source GIS Environment: A Case Study of the Basilicata Region (Southern Italy)

Soil is an essential, non-renewable natural resource that provides vital goods and services for ecosystems, human life, and the production of crops and fuels. The phenomena of land consumption and land use change have a considerable impact on ecosystems. In addition, the poor and confusing regulatory framework contributes to the spread of processes related to soil sealing, such as the wild installation of wind farms, resulting in an increasing fragmentation of the territory with related phenomena of soil degradation.The research work has proposed an innovative methodological approach on issues related to land consumption and land use change, based on a robust territorial and landscape study. The whole research has been focused on the use and integration between geographic information systems and remote sensing techniques for the study of the territory. The increasing availability of cartographic data and the evolution of satellite data is the basis of a system that provides a continuous phase of analysis of the phenomenon. The work defines the picture of the phenomenon in Basilicata, investigating various aspects of land consumption, going into specific detail of some sample areas. The objective was the application of remote sensing techniques and change detection analysis for the qualitative and quantitative estimation of land take related to degradation phenomena. The methodologies and data developed in this work, could be the basis for the creation of a regional database on soil consumption, which could be made up of a robust infrastructure of spatial data and could provide a service and a system of data collection and collect data and reports from citizens, companies, institutions, research organizations, would support public bodies in the definition of policies, strategies and actions aimed at the containment of the phenomenon and would implement, in addition, measures of limitation, prevention, monitoring and mitigation of the same.