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Geosites, a precious and nonrenewable geosphere resource, constitute a wealth from educational, scientific, naturalistic and cultural points of view, capable of expressing an economic potential proportional to their tourist appeal (Bentivenga 2015). This study is part of an important methodological framework: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA 2005), an international project that defines and quantifies ecosystem services (ES) and assesses changes and their consequences on human well-being. The methodology, which is progressively becoming as a cognitive support aimed at the environmental sizing of territorial policies, is considered particularly effective in assessing the impacts of choices associated with different land use scenarios as well as to protection and/or valorization policies. Adequate tool development for sustainable governance passes through a planning activity based on the integration of ecological, economic and sociopolitical elements within an interdisciplinary framework, to which the ecosystem analysis is able to provide important evaluation elements (Cowell and Lennon Environ Plann C Politics Space 32:263-282, 2014). According to MEA (2005), ES are grouped into four categories: supply, regulatory, support and cultural services. Starting from that, this work contributes to build an interpretative model for the evaluation of a relevant part of the fourth class: the territorial tourist attractiveness of the Basilicata region considering location and spatial distribution of the 113 regional geosites surveyed by ISPRA. Two different GIS-based methodologies have been applied to the context of the Basilicata region: the first based on linear geographical regression and the second through the use of InVEST, an open source suite. Comparing the results is useful to improve regional tourist attractiveness connected with territorial distribution of natural resources.

The current spatial planning system in Italy demonstrates its lack of a data infrastructure so robust, flexible and adaptive to provide adequate performance in the capacity to support the decision-making process. This weakness is manifested even more in the management of the territorial transformations under the pressure of rapid changes involving social, environmental and economic dimensions. The ecosystem services (ES) approach constitutes a robust framework to contribute to the renewal of the planning system by making explicit complex dynamics until now considered only marginally and by introducing spatially explicit knowledge as an effective decision support system (DSS). This work focuses on the class of Regulating and Maintaining Ecosystem Services (ReMES) as it is considered particularly relevant with respect to the ecosystems’ potential of expressing environmental performance and contributing to human well-being. A further characteristic of this class is the often significant mismatch between the spatial scale of the territorial transformations and the (larger) scale at which changes in ES supply are measured.

The Natura 2000 network was established as a tool to preserve the biological diversity of the European territory with particular regard to vulnerable habitats and species. According to recent studies, a relevant percentage of Natura 2000 sites are expected to be lost by the end of this century and there is widespread evidence that biodiversity conservation policies are not fully effective in relation to the management plans of the protected areas. This paper addresses the issue by analyzing a specific case in which there is a problem of integration between different competences and sectoral policies that leads to the lack of a monitoring system of territorial management performances. The study area, located in the Basilicata Region (Southern Italy), includes a Site of National Interest (SNI), for which several reclamation projects are still in the submission/approval phase, and a partially overlapping Natura 2000 network site. The tool used to monitor biodiversity in the study area is the degradation map obtained through the &ldquo, habitat quality and degradation&rdquo, InVEST tool which is used to assess the current trend and thus define a baseline for comparison with two medium and long-term scenarios applicable to the SNI&rsquo, s procedure of partial and total remediation. The proposed methodology is intended to be a part of a larger and more complex monitoring system that, developed within the framework of ecosystem services, allows for the overcoming of the limits related to fragmentation and contradictions that are present in land management by offering a valuable support to decision makers and the competent authorities in biodiversity conservation policy design.

Renewable Energy Sources (RES) are part of the solution to tackle the global problems of climate change and carbon emissions. Programs and policies at different levels are continuing to promote new RES farms, posing a relevant challenge to regional planners and administrators: how to manage landscape transformation and territorial fragmentation to find a really effective sustainable arrangement for these kinds of technologies? Most effects induced by RES (land-use change, land take, diminishing aesthetic values, loss of habitat quality), without a doubt, depend on the location and the spatial pattern of the plants, the relative distance between them, the extension of secondary infrastructures and their technical characteristics. This work takes part in the debate, originating from the need to establish a monitoring system for this kind of new territorial transformation and discusses the implementation of a sprinkling fragmentation index (SPX) in order to assess the current regional settlement structure of RES farms. Our case study concerns the Basilicata region (in Southern Italy), a very low-density area which over the last decade has undergone a relevant increase in the installation of RES technologies, not supported by an effective planning framework. The evolution of the regional energy system has been strongly influenced both by incentive policies and by (weak) urban and territorial planning policies. This approach could be a valuable contribution both in identifying a fragmentation threshold beyond which the expected negative impacts outweigh the benefits, and in providing a useful procedure for the management of future installations.

Land use change significantly affects ecosystem services provision. This impact, however, is difficult to assess and thus often neglected in policy making. It is therefore the task of territorial planning discipline to explore methodological approaches capable of making explicit complex relationships in order to use them as tools for effectively designing the sustainable development. In this paper, we report changes in land use over a 28-year period considering the territory of the Basilicata region. Our aim is to translate these changes in ecosystem services values, highlighting potentials of a framework able to integrate monetary figures into a larger approach based on the interactions between biomes and the meaning of human well-being more closely linked to the economics sector. The results show that the greatest loss occurred at the detriment of wooded areas and agricultural mosaic while bare land and arable land increased. Several municipalities experienced significant changes involving above all the classes in the agricultural compartment. The growth of urban settlements took place everywhere affecting to a much greater extent the most important centers, the only ones not subject to depopulation. Our estimate quantifies these changes in a total annual loss of ecosystem service delivery higher than €39 million with some municipalities where this loss corresponds to a significant part of GDP. Reversing the perspective, moreover, the internal areas emerge where, also due to depopulation, the monetization of ecosystem services leads to pro capita amounts equivalent to multiples of GDP per capita. The study sets the basis for an approach oriented towards defining tangible criteria for assessing the sustainability of territorial transformations and land use change.

From the beginning of the 21st century, following major global and European initiatives such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) and The Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity (2010), the idea that ecosystem services could be used as a decision support tool, gained considerable importance in several fields: from economy to public policy, from territorial planning to environmental assessment. Defined as the set of goods and services provided by ecosystems for the benefit of humans life quality, they express the potential to overcome traditional and not sufficiently effective approaches of policies and interventions undertaken so far for biodiversity conservation purposes. In urban and territorial planning disciplines, it is therefore necessary testing new tools capable of spatially explaining territorial components that constitute biodiversity hotspots or, specularly, threats to biological diversity persistence and resilience. Taking part to this methodological framework, this work assesses changes in habitat quality, considered as a proxy for biodiversity, in Tomar (Portugal), a study area particularly affected by forest fires-driven degradation phenomena. Results highlight the potential of such tools in explicating the role of different territorial threats on biodiversity conservation and points out the importance of proper natural and semi-natural environments’ management.

Social, demographic and economics transformations occurred in Basilicata Region (Italy) since 1950’s, have been developed transformations not always linked to effective and sustainable urban planning tools. A general research gap regards the tools for assessing such effectiveness of planning. In this work we describe the preliminary design of a thematic Atlas presenting Basilicata Region results achieved in previous researches concerning urban growth and consequently land use changes. On the bases of a territorial information system developed by LISUT research group we analyzed urban growth since 1950 comparing it with recent phenomena of RES (renewable energy sources) plants settlement occurred since 2000. Such spatial information, evaluated through fragmentation indexes, are compared with socio-economic data at municipal scale. The results are a comprehensive picture of local settlement development trends that allows to communicate evidences of current planning system including urban planning tools, sectorial planning (operating at regional scale), public investments program evidences. The Atlas will be published for Basilicata Region area (Italy) as a model in order to analyze and compare other European Regions.

Territorial transformations are currently influenced by the combination of multi-scale processes that generate complex change dynamics. In particular, we focus on the emerging conflicts between CO2 reduction policies and the preservation of natural and ecosystem values on a the local scale. Global policies stimulate a generalized effort in promoting the transition towards a low carbon economy, and a relevant component of such a development process is connected with Renewable Energy Sources (RES). Such technological settlement processes in low density areas generate relevant impacts. This paper discusses an ex-post-impact assessment methodology based on cumulative ecosystem services losses in a specific study area: the Melfi municipality in the Basilicata region (Italy). The proposed methodology, starting from a temporal evolution of RES plants, considers the ecosystem services estimation based on InVEST tools in order to deliver spatial multicriteria maps of the resulting territorial impacts. These results allowed to clarified the limits of a local sectorial planning approach and highlighted the opportunities offered by performance-based planning in assessing alternative transformation scenarios. The conclusions regard policy implications towards a multidimensional performance-based planning system where alternative low carbon transition scenarios could be compared in order to take into account territorial specializations and identity assets as a tool to drive decision-making in a sustainable planning perspective.

From the beginning of the 21st century, following major European and global initiatives such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity, the idea that Ecosystem services could be used as a decision support tool, gained considerable importance in several fields: from economy to public policy, from territorial planning to environmental assessment. This research is part of the methodological framework of an important strategic reference: the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an international project that defines ecosystem services and assesses the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being. According to the MA, ecosystem services are grouped into four categories: supplying services, regulation services, cultural services, and support services. Starting from this, the present work contributes to build interpretative models for the evaluation of a relevant part of the fourth class of ecosystem services: the territorial touristic attractiveness. The InVEST model, an open source toolkit, has been applied to assess attractiveness of the Basilicata Region considering both natural and cultural heritage in order to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the investigated methodology.

Artificial land use trends could represent an effective indicator of the settlement process quality and could also provide information about the efficacy of protection and exploitation policies in natural and rural areas. This work discusses an analytic procedure for the time series investigation of urban settlement development at the regional scale to verify the nexus between urban growth and demographic trends connected with the phenomenon of land take. In Italy, since 1950, the land take phenomenon has been a consequence of several factors: urbanization, realization of transport infrastructures including ports, airports, and highways, and the enhancement of industrial and productive systems. We analyzed all these territorial transformations that create waterproof soil, and more generally, a transition from natural and semi-natural uses toward artificial land use. After World War II, the demographic growth and the consequent housing demand generated a strong urbanization process in the main poles of economic development areas in Italy. Since the early 2000s, the situation has completely changed and the land take phenomenon is no longer mainly based on real need for new urban expansion areas based on effective urban planning tools, but is strongly related to a scattered demand for new housing in a weak territorial spatial planning system not able to drive effective urban development that minimizes speculative real estate initiatives. This uncontrolled occupation of soil generated, in Italy, a landscape fragmentation called the urban sprinkling phenomenon, different from urban sprawl, which is a wider phenomenon characterized by disordered urban growth. The present document aims to assess how uncontrolled expansion in areas characterized by low settlement density can generate fragmentation. To define if the territory is affected by the urban sprinkling phenomenon, two 50-year time series concerning urban expansion of buildings and demographic trends are analyzed calculating population and building density indices and their variation over the years. The sprinkling index is used to analyze the variation in the fragmentation degree at two different scales (regional and municipal). Finally, we discuss the context where this phenomenon has developed, analyzing the buildings located in hydrogeological risk zones and protected areas, and the correlation between demographic changes and the degree of territorial fragmentation variation.

The increase of artificial land use represents a relevant indicator in land management policies and practices. It is a useful tool in assessing the quality of settlement processes and the protection and enhancement policies in rural and natural areas. Over time land take processes have been caused by different phenomena: urban or industrial expansion, realization of infrastructures, the development or the productive exploitation of territorial areas characterized by the presence of specific resources (natural, mining, etc.). This phenomenon is no longer a direct consequence of a real need of new expansion areas throughout Italian national territory. In the past the phenomenon was mainly due to residential, productive or tertiary sector needs, and it was generated by demographic growth and the consequent urbanization process. In the last two decades land take is more and more related to a weak territorial governance, generally linked to an inefficiency of urban and territorial planning instruments and sometimes of speculative real estate initiatives. In this paper a spatial analysis procedure oriented to calculate indicators of urban fragmentation for Basilicata Region has been presented. Such indicators could drive to the identification of two phenomena: urban-sprawl and urban-sprinkling according to the literature classification proposed in several researches by Romano et al. The results represent a useful contribution in order to improve regional normative system concerning urban development. The research is part of a wider project on environmental and territorial indicators (INDICARE) promoted by FARBAS (Environmental Observatory Foundation of Basilicata Region) in collaboration with the University of Basilicata.