Analisi del territorio, dell’ambiente e del paesaggio rurale mediante tecniche di modellizzazione spaziale ed image processing di cartografie storiche.

By means of a compared analysis of the informative levels obtained from historical maps of different periods starting from year 1859, compared with more recent cartography through GIS and Image Processing technologies, the transformation occurred on rural land, environment and landscape was highlighted. The analysis was conducted with reference to an area of Basilicata Region, historically devoted to arboreal cultivation or wood-sheep farming, where starting from the end of the 19th century, thanks to the diffusion of mechanized techniques of cultivation and harvesting and of the industrial conversion of corn, an exploitation of wheat cultivation was observed. Through the digital processing of the maps that were found it was possible to reconstruct the three-dimensional shape of the land in the study area and, thanks to a photo-mosaic procedure, virtual reconstructions of the land in different time periods were achieved too. The obtained results in terms of land modification enabled therefore the drawing up of land use maps from which, considering the carbon dioxide mean consumption of different crops, also an environmental balance of the study area regarding the CO2 sequestration capacity was set out. Through the implementation of the Digital Terrain Models, enriched with the drape of land cover pictures, it was finally possible to evaluate in a scenic way the morphological and vegetation variations of agro-forestry landscape, simulating an hypothetical and virtual historical jump backwards enabling the analysis of the natural and anthropic changes of rural land, able to affect in an often deep way the structure of whole ecosystems.