Assessment of Tuscany Landscape Structure According to the Regional Landscape Plan Partition

Abstract

The landscape is considered a strategic asset by the Tuscan regional government, also for its economic role, meaning that a specific Landscape Plan has been developed, dividing the region into 20 Landscape Units and representing the main planning instrument at the regional level. Following the aims of the Landscape Plan and the guidelines of the European Landscape Convention, it is necessary to develop an adequate assessment of the landscape, evaluating the main typologies and their characteristics. The aim of this research is to carry out an assessment of the landscape diversity in Tuscany based on 20 study areas, analyzing land uses and landscape mosaic structures through the application of landscape metrics: number of land uses, mean patch size (MPS), Hill’s diversity number, edge density (ED), patch density (PD), land use diversity (LUD). The results highlight a correlation between the landscape typologies (forest, agricultural, mixed, periurban) and the complexity of the landscape structure, especially in relation to MPS and PD, while the combination of PD and LUD calculated on the basis of a hexagonal grid allows obtaining landscape complexity maps. Despite the phenomena of reforestation and urban sprawl of recent decades, Tuscany still preserves different landscape typologies characterized by a good level of complexity. This is particularly evident in mixed landscapes, while agricultural landscapes have a larger variability because of different historical land organization forms. The methodology applied in this study provided a large amount of data about land uses and the landscape mosaic structure and complexity and proved to be effective in assessing the landscape structure and in creating a database that can represent a baseline for future monitoring.

Implementing a GIS-Based Digital Atlas of Agricultural Plastics to Reduce Their Environmental Footprint; Part I: A Deductive Approach

“…A hexagonal grid was chosen, because it can be better exploited for spatial surveys, simulations, and continuous process monitoring [38], since it will be used to apply more complex spatial analyses in future investigations of this research (Part II). Indeed, a hexagonal grid has proved to be more suitable compared to other shapes, as reported in several kinds of geospatial research [48][49][50][51].…”

Small Cultural Forests: Landscape Role and Ecosystem Services in a Japanese Cultural Landscape

“…Therefore, the surveyed cultural landscape can be effectively considered a heterogeneous and complex landscape, thanks to the uniform and widespread presence of igune and other small woods. In addition, landscape structures can be assessed and characterized through the use of hundreds of landscape metrics developed to measure landscape patterns across a multitude of applications [63]; however, according to different studies, there is no need to use too many landscape metrics to properly describe landscape heterogeneity and complexity [37,64]. In particular, the density of the surveyed feature, can be effectively used to describe landscape patterns irrespective of the scale [64], while the MPS provides reliable data about the grain of the different landscape features [65].…”

“…The use of hexagons to carry out regular tessellations for landscape structure analysis is due to the fact that this kind of grid can offer different advantages: any given point inside a hexagon is closer to the center of that hexagon than if other shapes (i.e., square or triangle) of the same size would be used; in addition, hexagons are the only geometric shape for regular tessellations that shares a real border with every neighbor [36]. The choice of the size of the hexagon is made on the basis of previous experiences and on the relation with the overall extent of the area, bearing in mind that changes in the extent of the hexagons can lead to different results of landscape metrics [37]. For each hexagon, the number of patches of igune and other small forests totally or partially included and their surfaces in relation to the total surface of the hexagon have been calculated.…”

Dynamic evaluation and prediction of the ecological environment quality of the urban agglomeration on the northern slope of Tianshan Mountains

“…With the development of remote sensing technology in recent years, it has provided a large amount of data for ecosystem monitoring and also provided reliable guidance for the evaluation of ecological conditions at different scales (Klobucar et al, 2021). Remote sensing technology has become an important technical means for studying the ecological environment due to its large amount of data, wide coverage, good timeliness, and easy access (Venturi et al, 2021). Apply various ecological indicators (such as forests (Li et al, 2019), cities (Venturi et al, 2021), water bodies (Concepcion et al, 2021)) to monitor and evaluate the ecological environment.…”

“…Remote sensing technology has become an important technical means for studying the ecological environment due to its large amount of data, wide coverage, good timeliness, and easy access (Venturi et al, 2021). Apply various ecological indicators (such as forests (Li et al, 2019), cities (Venturi et al, 2021), water bodies (Concepcion et al, 2021)) to monitor and evaluate the ecological environment. Using remote sensing images with su cient temporal and spatial resolution can extract ecosystem dynamics (Edney and Wood, 2021), and quickly and accurately monitor changes in corresponding ecological indicators (Knox et al, 2017).Therefore, remote sensing and GIS are currently the most effective tools for studying and analyzing regional ecological environment because of their multi-dimensional, multi-characteristic, regular and fast data availability (Liu et al, 2015).…”