Land use change multi-approach assessment in a interregional context in South Italy

Objectives According to international and EU policies, complementary approaches for landscape and environment values assessment, in land use planning, are an essential prerequisite on a supra-regional scale. Study area is an area in transformation, now also affected by the institution of the Matese national park, between Campania and Molise regions. In this context, appropriate management policies and land use change (LUC), in favor of bio-energy crops, may help to create new economies and new spatial development perspectives aimed to change negative trends such as erosion risk, socio-economic problems and environmental impacts. The work intends to present a possible physical-mathematical approach for pragmatic determination of the predictable consequences for LUC environmental effects, through empirical analysis, simulation models and objective diagnosis, as support for the decision makers, already in the ex-ante evaluation stage. Methods Tools used in the framework adopted are GIS processing and spatial decision support analysis (ILWIS and ArcGIS software) for LUC scenarios construction. LUC possible impacts assessment on environmental components, was evaluated through science shared approaches of Ecosystem Services considering Habitat Quality and Soil Risk with Invest software, and of landscape metrics such as Patch number, Patch density, Simpson Index, through FRAGSTAT software. Results From the framework three scenarios are delineated. First scenario (Scenario 1) refers to the current development trend. Second scenario (Scenario 2) the energy crops spatial allocation is foreseen in areas with the highest LUC degree. The third scenario (Scenario 3) concerns land abandonment and downgrade in the same areas of scenario 2. Ecosystem services values of habitat quality and erosion risk in Scenario 2 showed highest improvement, in contrast to scenarios 1 and 3. On the other hand landscape metrics highlighted greatest risks of landscape homogenisation and mosaic structure simplification, just in Scenario 2. Consequently integrated assessments enforce for further investigation on LUC spatial distribution and for corrective and mitigation measures that would be applied.