Michele Munafò

Soil Sealing in the Growing City: A Survey in Rome, Italy ‡

Abstract This paper illustrates a procedure aimed at estimating diachronically soil sealing in suburban areas by using cartographical and statistical data. The procedure was applied (1949–2006) to the metropolitan area of Rome (Italy), a Mediterranean city with important land use changes observed during the last fifty years. A total of 1.477 random sites was chosen encompassing the entire investigated area (1.285 km2) and evaluated in terms of sealing condition in 1949, 1990, 1994, 2000, and 2006. Although resident population has been found quite stable since 1970s, the sealed surface area grew rapidly from 8% in 1949 to 26% in 2006. The sealing status of each site was found correlated to the distance from the city centre, while not correlated to the distance from the major roads, railways, and the boundaries of the neighbor protected area. These results suggest that soil sealing in Rome was associated to recent processes of urban sprawl which testify the slow transition from the semi-compact city to a more diffused urban agglomeration.

Integration of land use and land cover inventories for landscape management and planning in Italy

There are both semantic and technical differences between land use (LU) and land cover (LC) measurements. In cartographic approaches, these differences are often neglected, giving rise to a hybrid classification. The aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding and characterization of the two classification schemes using a comparison that allows maximization of the informative power of both. The analysis was carried out in the Molise region (Central Italy) using sample information from the Italian Land Use Inventory (IUTI). The sampling points were classified with a visual interpretation of aerial photographs for both LU and LC in order to estimate surfaces and assess the changes that occurred between 2000 and 2012. The results underscore the polarization of land use and land cover changes resulting from the following: (a) recolonization of natural surfaces, (b) strong dynamisms between the LC classes in the natural and semi-natural domain and (c) urban sprawl on the lower hills and plains. Most of the observed transitions are attributable to decreases in croplands, natural grasslands and pastures, owing to agricultural abandonment. The results demonstrate that a comparison between LU and LC estimates and their changes provides an understanding of the causes of misalignment between the two criteria. Such information may be useful for planning policies in both natural and semi-natural contexts as well as in urban areas.

Soil sealing footprint as an indicator of dispersed urban growth: a multivariate statistics approach

The present study introduces a set of indicators derived from high-resolution land-use maps with the aim to illustrate the spatial distribution, intensity, and diversity of sealed soils in a Mediterranean region (Rome, Italy) shifting from a mono-centric spatial organization toward a dispersed urban agglomeration. A multivariate approach provides a comprehensive assessment of Rome ‘sealing footprint’, classifying local districts according to different imperviousness profiles. Results illustrate the rearrangement of the land-use structure determined by suburbanization with higher soil consumption and lower land-use efficiency. The approach is considered a promising tool to inform policies for a spatially balanced and land-saving urban development.

Urban Sprawl as a Factor of Vulnerability to Climate Change: Monitoring Land Cover Change in Dar es Salaam

Urban sprawl is a major cause of environmental change, indirectly affecting climate processes on both the global and local scale and impacting the livelihoods of people who are directly dependent on ecosystem services. In the case of rapidly sprawling cities, land cover monitoring is a spatial planning requirement that must keep pace with urban growth, for the purpose of providing timely responses to environmental change and thus reducing people’s vulnerability. Due to the lack of financial resources, Least Developed Countries need affordable methodology for rapid and effective land cover monitoring, suitable for low cost equipment. This chapter presents a methodology for monitoring land cover changes in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, developed in the context of a project for the enhancement of local authorities’ capacity to assess vulnerability to climate change and mainstream adaptation objectives into urban development plans. This methodology relies on the classification of free Landsat images and is implementable using open-source software, with the specific purpose of making sustainable the continuous assessment of urban sprawl for Dar City Council’s planning services. The methodology phases are described, from preprocessing to processing. This includes the use of a free open-source plugin for QGIS, developed during the project, which allows for the semi-automatic classification of images. Classification results demonstrate the conspicuous urban growth of Dar es Salaam from 2002 to 2011, and provide insight into the relationship between urban sprawl and population growth.

Mapping and Assessment of PM10 and O3 Removal by Woody Vegetation at Urban and Regional Level

This study is the follow up of the URBAN-MAES pilot implemented in the framework of the EnRoute project. The study aims at mapping and assessing the process of particulate matter (PM10) and tropospheric ozone (O3) removal by various forest and shrub ecosystems. Different policy levels and environmental contexts were considered, namely the Metropolitan city of Rome and, at a wider level, the Latium region. The approach involves characterization of the main land cover and ecosystems using Sentinel-2 images, enabling a detailed assessment of Ecosystem Service (ES), and monetary valuation based on externality values. The results showed spatial variations in the pattern of PM10 and O3 removal inside the Municipality and in the more rural Latium hinterland, reflecting the spatial dynamics of the two pollutants. Evergreen species displayed higher PM10 removal efficiency, whereas deciduous species showed higher O3 absorption in both rural and urban areas. The overall pollution removal accounted for 5123 and 19,074 Mg of PM10 and O3, respectively, with a relative monetary benefit of 161 and 149 Million Euro for PM10 and O3, respectively. Our results provide spatially explicit evidence that may assist policymakers in land-oriented decisions towards improving Green Infrastructure and maximizing ES provision at different governance levels.

Copernicus high-resolution layers for land cover classification in Italy

ABSTRACT The high-resolution layers (HRLs) are land cover maps produced for the entire Italian territory (approximately 30 million hectares) in 2012 by the European Environment Agency, aimed at monitoring soil imperviousness and natural cover, such as forest, grassland, wetland, and water surface, with a high spatial resolution of 20 m. This study presents the methodologies developed for the production, verification, and enhancement of the HRLs in Italy. The innovative approach is mainly based on (a) the use of available reference data for the enhancement process, (b) the reduction of the manual work of operators by using a semi-automatic approach, and (c) the overall increase in the cost-efficiency in relation to the production and updating of land cover maps. The results show the reliability of these methodologies in assessing and enhancing the quality of the HRLs. Finally, an integration of the individual layers, represented by the HRLs, was performed in order to produce a National High-Resolution Land Cover map.

Land consumption monitoring: an innovative method integrating SAR and optical data

In this paper, the use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for the monitoring of land consumption is analyzed. The paper presents an automatic procedure that integrates SAR and optical data, which can be effectively used to generate land consumption maps or update existing maps. The main input of the procedure is a series of SAR amplitude images acquired over a given geographical area and observation period. The main assumption of the procedure is that land consumption is associated with an increase of the SAR amplitude values. Such an increase is detected in the SAR amplitude time series using an automatic Bayesian algorithm. The results based on the SAR amplitude are then filtered using an NDVI map derived from optical imagery. The effectiveness of the proposed procedure is illustrated using SAR data from the Sentinel-1 and TerraSAR-X sensors, and optical data from the Sentinel-2 sensor.

Urban Imperviousness Effects on Summer Surface Temperatures Nearby Residential Buildings in Different Urban Zones of Parma

Rapid and unplanned urban growth is responsible for the continuous conversion of green or generally natural spaces into artificial surfaces. The high degree of imperviousness modifies the urban microclimate and no studies have quantified its influence on the surface temperature (ST) nearby residential building. This topic represents the aim of this study carried out during summer in different urban zones (densely urbanized or park/rural areas) of Parma (Northern Italy). Daytime and nighttime ASTER images, the local urban cartography and the Italian imperviousness databases were used. A reproducible/replicable framework was implemented named “Building Thermal Functional Area” (BTFA) useful to lead building-proxy thermal analyses by using remote sensing data. For each residential building (n = 8898), the BTFA was assessed and the correspondent ASTER-LST value (ST_BTFA) and the imperviousness density were calculated. Both daytime and nighttime ST_BTFA significantly (p < 0.001) increased when high levels of imperviousness density surrounded the residential buildings. These relationships were mostly consistent during daytime and in densely urbanized areas. ST_BTFA differences between urban and park/rural areas were higher during nighttime (above 1 °C) than daytime (about 0.5 °C). These results could help to identify “urban thermal Hot-Spots” that would benefit most from mitigation actions.

Towards Environmental Analytics: DPSIR as a System of Systems

DPSIR (Driving forces, Pressures, States, Impacts, Responses) is a framework addressing the needs of environmental data reporting and assessment, extensively exploited by the European Union, its Member States and associated countries. The DPSIR framework does not model the environment, however it implies a systems model. Making such model explicit allows users to better understand the semantics of the five DPSIR components, therefore improving the harmonization and quality of the reported data, in particular in order to process them as Big Data. To such purpose, the tools provided by the systems theory are useful, specifically the system-of-systems (SoS) point of view. On such basis, a conceptual model of the relationships between the constituent systems of the socio-ecological system (SES) is proposed. As a result of such analysis some possible evolutions of DPSIR are envisaged, in terms of expanded and refined environmental data flows. Such evolutions aim to build a better integrated environmental knowledge base, as a prerequisite to a wider exploitation of analytics for the relevant decision processes and management activities.

Summer Heat Risk Index: how to integrate recent climatic changes and soil consumption component

7 Face to the urban resiliency two major environmental threats are widely recognized: the increasing summer air temperatures and the soil consumption that affects a large number of city in Italy. The work have the goal to present preliminary the actual Heat Summer Risk defined by using Crichton’s Risk Triangle (Crichton, 1999) on the second Italian level of administration (ADM2 Province). For each administrative unit we have considered as hazard layer the most recent trend of summer air temperature assessed (1980-2014); the exposure layer is individuated by the amount of population living in each province and finally as vulnerable layer the mean degree of soil consumption expressed in percentage was considered. Thanks to these information Crichton’s methodology are able to give a quantitative risk value index further classified in five risk class. Data sources was provided by several authoritative institutions : (i) ISPRA ( Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research) that provide data about density of soil consumption for 2015 as reported in the Soil Consumption Report 2016; (ii) ECAD (European Climate Assessment & Dataset) that gives detailed historical daily climatic layers (E-OBS 1950-2015 v 13.0); (iii) ISTAT ( Italian National Institute of Statistics) that provides the last updates on Italian population data (2016). The results was mapped and presented. All computations was carried out in R-STAT environment by using different library available for Spatial and Trend Analysis. Data and code are released in public repository. 8