Land-cover changes and sustainable development in a rural cultural landscape of central Italy: classical trends and counter-intuitive results

Defining and understanding the long-term social and ecological evolution of rural cultural landscapes can provide insights into complex dynamics of landscape and environment changes. Land cover changes (LCCs) in Mediterranean-type ecosystems are mainly due to human-induced landscape transformations. Multi-scale spatial analysis can provide useful information in the interpretation of LCCs data and contribute to identifying underlying drivers of landscape change. In the present study, we analyze eight diachronic land cover maps and perform statistical data assessments of human pressure in the Tolfa-Cerite district (Northern Latium, central Italy) to investigate potential changes in the cultural landscape. The Tolfa-Cerite district is a generally dry area with subhumid-humid sites and an interesting mosaic of Mediterranean-temperate vegetation, agricultural and pastoral land, and a millenarian human presence. LCCs were assessed over a period of 57 years (1949-2006) using maps at both low-resolution (1:100.000) and high-resolution (1:25.000) with different class nomenclature systems. Three primary land cover changes have been observed during the investigated period: (i) urbanization, (ii) land abandonment, and (iii) deforestation. While the former two classes of landscape change are particularly common in the northern Mediterranean region, forest conversion to pastures and shrub lands due to intensive grazing, fires, climate aridity, and increasing human pressure is, nowadays, rarely observed in Italy. Better understanding the influence of population dynamics at the local scale and other drivers of LCCs can help finetuning conservation policies looking at landscape quality, diversity, and fragmentation.