Assessment of the Ecosystem Services Capacity in Natural Protected Areas for Biodiversity Conservation

World Multidisciplinary Civil Engineering-Architecture-Urban Planning Symposium - WMCAUS

土木建筑工程

Ronchi, Silvia^1 ; Salata, Stefano^2

Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Milan, Italy^1

Politecnico di Torino, Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning, Italy^2

关键词: Biodiversity conservation;    Conservation measures;    Ecological integrity;    Land use change analysis;    Legislative initiatives;    Management frameworks;    Natural protected areas;    Regional institutions;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/245/7/072031/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1757-899X/245/7/072031

学科分类：土木及结构工程学

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

Recently, in Italy, a legislative proposal has been set to reform the role and the functions of natural protected areas promoting their aggregation (or the abolition) pursuing a better efficiency for their administration and economic saving. The system of natural protected areas is composed of different conservation levels: there are the Natural parks, established in the '80 by national or regional institution for the safeguard of natural elements, the Natura 2000 -Habitat 92/43/CEE promoted by European Union, with conservation measures for maintaining or restoring habitats and species of Communitarian interest, and the local parks of supra-municipal interest (namely PLIS) created by single municipalities or their aggregation aimed at limiting the soil sealing process. The hierarchical level of protection has determined differences in the management of the areas which leads to various approaches and strategies for biodiversity conservation and integrity. In order to assess strengths and weaknesses of the legislative initiative, the new management framework should be designed, considering the ecosystem characteristics of each natural protected area to define the future opportunities and critics, rather than, in the extreme case, remove the level of protection due to the absence of valuable ecosystem conditions. The paper provides an operative support to better apply the legislative proposal investigating the dynamics that affect all protected areas using the land take process as a major threat to biodiversity conservation in natural zones. The land take process is explored using the Land Use Change analysis (LUCa) as a possible way to determine the impact and the environmental effects of land transitions. LUCa is also useful to determine the loss of protected zones capacity to support Ecosystem Services. Finally, the assessment of the Ecosystem Services Capacity (ESC) index expresses the ability of each LULC to provide ES and, in particular, the Ecological Integrity, Regulating Services and Provisioning Services. The efficacy of the proposal is tested in the Lombardy Region (Northwest of Italy) where the natural protected areas are more than 500 with a territorial extension of 740 thousand hectares that correspond to 31% of the regional surface.