Environmental Quality and Territorial Vulnerability Assessment Through the GIS of Landscape Units of Italy: The Experience of the Map of Nature Project

Author: Nicola Lugeri
Organization: Presidency of the Council of Ministers

Via Curtatone, 3
Rome, 00185
Italy

Phone: +39 06 4444 229
Fax: +39 06 4444 219
nicola.lugeri@dstn.it

The GIS of Landscape Units of Italy has been realized in order to map the landscapes of Italy at a regional scale (1:250,000), with the aim of defining land settings that exhibit a homogeneity at such scale. This has been the basis to develop a new method for evaluating environmental quality and territorial vulnerability.

Landscape units have been recognized following a holistic approach based on a synthetic and integrated study of the structural elements of the landscape in their composition and pattern. Interpretation of satellite imagery and aerial photographs played a primary role in the realization of the map, integrated with field surveys and ancillary data.

In order to quantify the values on environmental quality and territorial vulnerability of each landscape unit, some indicators of environmental conditions have been chosen. These parameters, entered into the GIS or derived from it, have been combined in an experimental mathematical model. The geodatabase has been realized in an ArcInfo-ArcView GIS integrated environment.