evolution trends of land use/land cover in a mediterranean forest landscape in italy

EVOLUTION TRENDS OF LAND USE/LAND COVER IN A MEDITERRANEAN FOREST

LANDSCAPE IN ITALY

Salvatore Di Fazio, Giuseppe Modica, Paolo Zoccali

‘Mediterranea’ University of Reggio Calabria

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INTRODUCTION and problem statement

Though influenced by biophysical factors (soil conditions, topography, climate, etc.), the result of Land Use/Land Cover changes (LULCc) is mostly due to the human activity.

The estimation of LULC status and change can provide crucial ecological information for science-oriented resource management and policy-making. Their analysis is one of the main research topics of ecology and landscape ecology.

Over the last decades, the most significant LULC changes have occurred as a consequence: Urban sprawl; Agricultural intensification in the most suitable areas; Agricultural abandonment in marginal areas; More frequent and more intense summer forest fires.

The present work is part of a broader research aimed at the characterization, interpretation and valorisation of the forestry landscape in a representative mountainous region of Southern Italy.

The main goal of this paper is to interpret the forest landscape dynamics occurred over the period 1955÷2006 in the municipality of Serra San Bruno, located in the centre of Calabria

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STUDY AREA - The Serra S. Bruno municipality (Italy)

The study area is the so called Serre Vibonesi area, a mountainous region including the territory of four municipalities:

• Serra San Bruno,• Mongiana, • Stilo • Bivongi.

The municipality of Serra San Bruno has an area of ~ 4,000 ha, a residential density of 178.5 inhab.∙km-2 and is situated at an average altitude of 980 m a.s.l. (733-1418 m).

The high environmental value of this area motivated the institution of several protected areas.

44

The area of Serra S. Bruno is one of the most interesting areas of Calabria because of the presence of many heritage resources of great natural, historic and architectural interest.

Count Roger II gave St Bruno of Cologne the territories of Serre Vibonesi plateau to build his hermitage, the Charterhouse of Santo Stefano del Bosco, first Carthusian monastery in Italy and the second most important in Europe after Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse (near Grenoble, France).

For centuries, the forests were owned by the Charterhouse of Serra San Bruno, founded by St Bruno of Cologne in the 11th century, and managed efficiently and sensitively according to the methods of the Carthusian monks

Basilian monastery of Saint JohnTherestis

Charterhouse of Serra S. Bruno


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The local industrial archaeology heritage is also very significant: Watermills; Old Royal iron factories; Hydroelectric power stations.

It is related to the utilization of water and wood as energy sources and dates back to the time of Bourbon rule in Calabria (XVIII-XIX centuries).

Presence of the charcoal-production sites where many traditional vertical mound charcoal-kilns are still present and active.


Radius: ~ 5 m; Height : ~ 4 m; Length of vertical mound charcoal-kiln’s building: 7 days.

Amount of wood employed: ~ 50÷60 t; Amount of charcoal produced: ~ 10 t.

Length of carbonization: 20÷22 days; Carbonization yields: 20% in summer; 16,5% in winter.

Wood species employed: mostly Holm oak (Quercus ilex L.) and Beech (Fagus Sylvatica L.).

66

1955 and 1983 aerial photographs consisted of 9 contact copies (23 cm x 23 cm) scanned at 600x600 dpi resolution by IGM

Provided in non-georeferenced and non-compressed TIFF graphic format.

Aerial photographs georeferenced by 20÷30 GCP each.Spatial resolution 1.37 m RMSE < 6.5 m

MATERIALS AND METHODS - Aerial image processing and GIS database preparation

Characteristics of the aerial photographs and orthophotos used in the research

Year Frame data Flight data Source

1955Sheet n° 246Strip/Frames: 241/ 10369 10370 10371Strip/Frames: 242/ 10418 10419 10420Format: Digital – 600dpi

Height: 6000 mScale: 1:36000

Date: 02 July 1955 Italian Military Geography Institute

(IGMI)http://www.igmi.org

1983Sheet n° 246Strip/Frames: 16/ 534 535 536 537 538Strip/Frames: 17/ 573 573 575 576 577Format: Digital – 600dpi

Height: 4800 mScale: 1:30000

Date: 06 Sept. 1983

1994 B/W Aerial Orthophotos via GIS Server catalogue

Date: May 1994Spatial resolution: 1 m (only for consultation) National Cartographic Portal

www.pcn.minambiente.it

2006 Colour Aerial Orthophotos via GIS Server catalogue

Date: 18 May 2006Spatial resolution: 0.5 m

(only for consultation)

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MATERIALS AND METHODS - LULC mapping

CORINE Land Cover ClassesLULC Classes used

for data analysis

Artificial surfaces

Historical buildings

Continuous urban fabric

Continuous urban fabric (Urb-Cont)

Discontinuous urban fabric

Green urban areas

Discontinuous urban fabric(Urb-Disc)

Industrial or commercial units

Mining areas

Industrial, commercial and transport units (Ind)

Agricultural areas

Land principally occupied by agriculture, with significant areas of natural vegetation

Pastures

Non-irrigated arable land

Agricultural areas (Agric)

Forests and semi-natural areas

Coniferous forest

Coniferous ReforestationConiferous forest (Con-For)

Broad-leaved forest

Broad-leaved mix forest

Broad-leaved Reforestation

Broad-leaved forest (Blv-For)

Mixed forest

Rows of treesMixed forest (Mix-For)

Transitional woodland shrub

Open spaces with little or no vegetation

Shrub and/or herbaceous vegetation associations (Shrub)

Water bodies Water bodies Inland waters (Waters)

Correspondence between CORINE legend nomenclature and LULC classes used for detecting LULC changes.

In brackets, the symbols utilized in figures and tables in the following slides.

In order to improve the interpretation of the results, the original 44 LULC classes of the CORINE classification system at III level of detail were aggregated in 9 classes so as to interpret changes as change types

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MATERIALS AND METHODS - LULC mapping

Photointerpretation made at a fixed scale of 1:1,000÷1:1,500 for all periods under investigation.

The LULC 2006 map has been the reference map; the other LULC maps were produced by updating it.

Minimum mapping unit 0.2 ha

The thematic accuracy of the 2006 LULC map was assessed by means of a stratified random sampling

Overall classification accuracy 95.85%

Kappa coefficient (Khat) 0.94

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS - Analysis of LULC Changes

Landscape composition in Serra St. Bruno in the four periods under investigation. Data in [ha] and in [%]

Agricultural and forest areas as a whole occupied the most part of the study area, even though they were differently distributed.

1955

Agric 41.19%

Mix-For 47.51%

Blv-For 5.39%

The urban fabric was almost completely continuous (Urb-Cont) and coincided with the historical nucleus (0.89%).

2006Agric 20.98%

Mix-For 49.31%

Blv-For ~ 18%

The total amount of forest areas passed from 54.25% in 1955 to 73.34% of the total area in 2006.

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS - Area changes and change rates of LULC classes

The rows display the categories of t1

The columns display the categories of t2.

Row vector shows the evolution of a land use type in the period t1÷t2.

Column vector shows the land use type at time t1, from which another land use type generated at time t2.

The data of the main diagonal, indicate the area of persistence.

2006

1955Urb-Cont Urb-Disc Ind Agric Con-For Blv-For Mix-For Shrub Waters Sum 1955

Urb-Cont 30.98 - - - - - - - 0.36 31.34

Urb-Disc - 4.48 - - - - - - - 4.48

Ind - - 1.97 - - - - - - 1.97

Agric 24.68 72.21 27.39 789.43 87.51 484.82 133.14 41.07 2.92 1663.18

Con-For - - - - 12.86 0.36 39.90 1.20 - 54.38

Blv-For - 0.74 - 29.28 1.02 160.78 25.29 0.33 - 217.44

Mix-For 0.27 - 0.75 8.82 138.18 18.10 1749.21 2.93 - 1918.27

Shrub 2.76 0.28 - 14.71 5.48 50.99 42.44 5.25 - 121.91

Waters 1.07 2.76 0.25 - - 10.41 0.78 0.76 3.61 24.64

Sum 2006 59.76 80.47 30.41 847.24 245.05 725.46 1990.77 51.55 6.89 4037.60

1983


Urb-Cont 27.27 1.13 - 1.66 - - - - 1.28 31.34

Urb-Disc - 4.47 - - - - - - - 4.47

Ind - - 1.97 - - - - - - 1.97

Agric 8.95 45.85 33.15 991.46 78.83 335.52 128.63 39.34 1.45 1663.18

Con-For - - - 1.91 12.17 1.20 39.10 - - 54.38

Blv-For - 0.16 - 36.48 1.05 135.07 43.18 1.44 - 217.44

Mix-For 1.70 - 1.02 15.06 48.56 21.16 1829.93 0.84 - 1918.27

Shrub - - - 23.55 5.59 47.95 40.64 4.21 - 121.91

Waters 0.39 1.69 - - - 8.73 0.84 0.28 3.44 24.63

Sum 1983 38.32 53.31 36.19 1079.35 146.20 549.63 2082.31 46.11 6.16 4037.60

Spatial comparison of LULC made by means of post-classification comparison technique that can provide a complete matrix of change directions

Relative and absolute changes for each of the 9 land cover types were calculated from 9x9 Transition matrices according to the 4 time-intervals defined.

1111


100ln1

112

2

t

t

A

A

ttr

1tA

2tA

= Area of the land use type in time t1 = Area of the land use type in time t2

LULC classes

1955÷1983 1983÷1994 1994÷2006 1955÷2006

Urb-Cont 0.73 1,63 2,17 1,26

Urb-Disc 8.84 4,70 -0,86 5,67

Ind 10.39 -0,46 -0,97 5,38

Agric -1.54 -1,74 -0,42 -1,32

Con-For 3.53 0,33 4,01 2,95

Blv-For 3.31 1,98 0,50 2,36

Mix-For 0.29 0,02 -0,40 0,07

Shrub -3.48 0,32 0,64 -1,69

Waters -4.92 0,94 0,00 -2,50

The mean annual rate of change was calculated for each LULC class by means of the index r as proposed by Puyravaud.

This index represents the rate of the compound interest law.

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LULC dynamics concerning agricultural areas in the period 1955÷2006

In the period under investigation, the agricultural areas were the most concerned by the changes occured in the study area.

In particular, the agricultural area was incorporated in the forestry classes.

These dynamics are due to the intensification of silvicultural activities.

These LULC changes described above are combined with those related to the abandonment of the Agric class, consequently occupied by Shrub class.

1313


LULC dynamic networks of 1955÷2006 changes. The sequence of percentage in each LULC class type indicates its share on the entire landscape composition analysed in 1955 and in 2006, respectively. Numbers of [ha] marked above the arrows represent the surface changed from one LULC class type to another

These dynamics are confirmed by the Agricultural Censuses conducted by ISTAT for the years 1970, 1982, 1990 and 2000.

The analysis of data shows that the number of farms has halved, passing from 503 in 1970 to 228 in 2000 (-54.7%).

Correspondingly, UAA (Utilized Agricultural Area) has dropped, though less dramatically, from 1027.63 ha in 1970 to 716.74 ha in 2000 (- 30.25%), with a consequent increase (+53.9%) in the average area per farm (from 2.04 ha to 3.14 ha).

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Moreover, the discontinuous urban fabric is still changing: since the ‘80s, it has been tending to be incorporated in the Urb-Cont class.

URBAN SPRAWL The urban sprawl of the study area has concerned and is still concerning almost flat areas (slope ≤10%).

1955Urb-disc 4.48 80.56Urb-Cont 31.34 59.65

2006

1515


The trend of the total number of buildings contributes in explaining the urban dynamic: 331 in 1955, 1011 in 1983, 1829 in 1994 and, finally, 2057 in 2006. Resident population passed from 8,517 inhabitants in 1961 (the highest value since 1861) to 6,955 in 2010. The highest rate of housing construction was recorded, when, owing to the temporary lack of effective planning regulations, many buildings were constructed in unsuitable areas.

URBAN SPRAWL

1616

Number of houses per typology of occupation in Serra S. Bruno municipality in 1971÷2001 period (source: Italian National Institute of Statistics).

In those years housing construction did not meet a residential need, but rather it answered the purpose to invest in the property market in a period of high monetary inflation.

At present, many of them are let during summer for the so-called “Tourism of return” (or “Roots-Tourism”) and, to a lesser extent, for exogenous tourism

URBAN SPRAWL

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Conclusions and future research directions

Understanding the evolution trends of landscape, particularly those related to urban/rural relations, is crucial for a sustainable landscape planning.

In order to better quantifying and interpreting LULC changes, the spatial - historical (aerial photographs) and recent (orthophotos) - data with socio-economic data in a geodatabase at a detailed scale are integrated.

The analysis of LULC changes allows the temporal verification of the positive (e.g. reforestation of agricultural areas, land consolidation, etc.) or negative (lack of landscape planning tools, effects of agricultural abandonment, etc.) effects of past territorial policies.

These analyses can allow to implement landscape management tools and sustainable landscape planning so as to direct future changes towards those which had positive effects and to contrast the actions which had negative effects on the landscape in the past.

Future developments of the research will include the use of VHR satellite remote sensing data and landscape metrics.

EVOLUTION TRENDS OF LAND USE/LAND COVER IN A

MEDITERRANEAN FOREST LANDSCAPE IN ITALY

Salvatore Di Fazio, Giuseppe Modica, Paolo Zoccali

[email protected]

19a19

Additional slides

Logical and organizational scheme interlinking the main cultural/natural heritage resources to favour their integrated tourism use in Serra San Bruno District.

1 - Charcoal itineraryFocuses on the interpretation of charcoal production sites and, in particular, of the traditional vertical mound charcoal-kilns.

2 - Spirit and Nature traildesigned to favour a contemplative and spiritual experience by offering a simple and beautiful contact with woods and St. Bruno charterhouse.

3 - Wood and Water itineraryPathway running through the Ferdinandea forest, belonged to Ferdinand de Bourbon (~ 3500 ha).

4 - Industrial archaeology itineraryconnects the ruins of the Mongiana Royal Foundry to a weapon factory of the Bourbon age.

5 - Monastic sites itineraryoffers a series of “cultural bridges” connecting different sites of the historic monastic settlements in Calabria.

Thematic routes based on the “nature-culture” and “nature-

spirituality” connection

20a20

o Coppices of Holm oak in the study area;

1. Preparation of the place for the mound kiln building (radius ~ 5 m);

2. Woodpile preparation according to the wood size;

3. Scaffolding of the tree stumps and building of the central chimney (square section with side of 30 cm)

4. Laying of the internal strata using wood with 8-10 cm in diameter;

5. Laying of the external strata using wood with 3-5 cm in diameter;

6. Covering using straw and earth (thickness 10 cm);

7. Lightning and slow combustion (with very high temperatures and restricted quantity of oxigen pyrolysis) for 20-22 days (dependig on the season);

8. Cooling, Earth and straw removal and Charcoal extraction.

9. The final product: charcoal (in photo, high quality holm oak charcoal).

10. Packaging of the charcoal in bags of 25 kg.

Additional slides

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Additional slides RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS - Area changes and change rates of LULC classes

1994


Urb-Cont 33.90 2.65 - - - 0.91 0.95 - - 38.40

Urb-Disc 2.60 48.87 - 1.39 - 0.45 - - - 53.31

Ind - - 22.92 7.40 0.94 1.42 0.26 3.19 - 36.13

Agric 6.17 34.21 8.09 823.58 22.35 134.77 38.20 8.16 3.81 1079.36

Con-For - - - 2.40 96.29 20.05 26.37 0.96 - 146.06

Blv-For 1.99 2.00 2.47 34.91 5.57 466.08 18.95 17.60 - 549.59

Mix-For - - 0.48 19.53 26.00 31.14 2002.68 2.63 - 2082.48

Shrub - - 0.25 1.52 0.51 28.36 0.26 15.16 - 46.06

Waters 1.48 1.63 - - - 0.11 - - 2.99 6.21

Sum 1994 46.14 89.37 34.22 890.72 151.65 683.31 2087.68 47.71 6.80 4037.60

2006


Urb-Cont 45.51 - - 0.45 - - - - - 45.96

Urb-Disc 10.59 77.52 - 1.26 - - - - - 89.37

Ind - - 24.01 0.73 - 5.25 0.61 3.73 - 34.34

Agric 2.41 1.91 4.73 814.54 0.10 47.35 7.40 12.47 - 890.92

Con-For - - - - 135.26 - 16.26 - - 151.52

Blv-For 1.14 1.14 1.25 20.21 0.97 648.96 1.60 7.95 - 683.22

Mix-For - - 0.13 5.55 108.68 8.03 1964.69 0.60 - 2087.68

Shrub - - 0.43 4.54 - 15.67 0.29 26.77 - 47.71

Waters - - - - - - - - 6.89 6.89

Sum 2006 59.65 80.56 30.55 847.29 245.02 725.27 1990.85 51.53 6.89 4037.60

Relative and absolute changes for each of the 9 land cover types were calculated from 9x9 Transition matrices (or Cross-tabulation matrices) according to 4 time-intervals.

Each transition matrix is built for the time interval t1 to t2.

The rows display the categories of time 1 and the columns display the categories of time 2.

Row vector shows the evolution of a land use type in the period t1÷t2.

Column vector shows the land use type at time t1, from which another land use type generated at time t2.

The data of the main diagonal, indicate the area of persistence.

Spatial comparison of LULC made by means of post-classification comparison technique (using data in vectorial format) that can provide a complete matrix of change directions

22a22


100ln1

112

2

t

t

A

A

ttr

1tA

2tA

= Area of the land use type in time t1 = Area of the land use type in time t2

LULC classes

1955÷1983 1983÷1994 1994÷2006 1955÷2006

Urb-Cont 0.73 1,63 2,17 1,26

Urb-Disc 8.84 4,70 -0,86 5,67

Ind 10.39 -0,46 -0,97 5,38

Agric -1.54 -1,74 -0,42 -1,32

Con-For 3.53 0,33 4,01 2,95

Blv-For 3.31 1,98 0,50 2,36

Mix-For 0.29 0,02 -0,40 0,07

Shrub -3.48 0,32 0,64 -1,69

Waters -4.92 0,94 0,00 -2,50

The mean annual rate of change was calculated for each LULC class by means of the index r as proposed by Puyravaud.

This index represents the rate of the compound interest law.

In the population dynamics, the rate at which a population increases in size, if there are no density-dependent forces regulating the population, is known as the intrinsic rate of increase

after integration

evolution trends of land use/land cover in a mediterranean forest landscape in italy

Technology

charterhouse of serra

municipality ofserra

marginal areas

protected areas

municipality of serra

charterhouse ofserra

significant lulc changes

st bruno ofcologne