A combined GIS and remote sensing approach for monitoring climate change-related land degradation to support landscape preservation and planning tools: the Basilicata case study

Monitoring landscapes in times of climate change patterns is a crucial issue, moreover, in the analyzed Mediterranean area, one of the major global candidates to develop land degradation stresses and consequential desertification phenomena. The research presented here is developed in the Mediterranean Basin, specifically in the Basilicata Region (southern Italy). The region is characterized by a very long history of intensive anthropization endowed by the high diversity of relatively geologically young soil types that consequentially created a vastity of spatial mosaics, which contributed to the composition of its archeolandscapes and endorsed some specific characteristics of the Mediterranean region, that evolved to respond to the human impact, including grazing, cultivation, and fires. Those key elements lead to the crucial issues of the region investigated here as soil erosion, salinization, loss of organic carbon, loss of biodiversity, and landslides, which together with deforestations, depopulation, and wildfires, define the exact framework of degradation and marginality. The evaluation of the sensitivity to degradation was performed (i) firstly at the regional scale, through a MEDALUS (Kosmas et al. 1999) approach, by implementing 6 main indicators (Soil Quality Index, Climate Quality Index, Vegetation Quality Index, Management Quality Index, Landslide Risk Index, Water Availability Index), and (ii) secondly at the mid-regional scale, through remote sensing by evaluation of the NDVI differencing thresholds in time intervals, covering a 20 years’ time span going from 2000 to 2020. The study helped to define the in-progress land degradation trends and scenarios of the region, which must be the evidence-based foundation of integrated landscape planning strategies in marginal territories, implemented through a Decision Support System (DSS) based both on ecological, climate-adaptive, and environmental indicators, and on social, cultural, and economic development co-creation strategies.