Land use transformations, territory naturalness and ecological planning

An analysis is made of the land use transformations over the last sixty years, as well as the consequences of these transformations on the naturalness of the territories of three municipalities of the “Nuovo Circondario Imolese” (Bologna, Italy). The selected municipalities are: Medicina, Borgo Tossignano and Castel del Rio, which represent the main territorial aspects of the “Nuovo Circondario Imolese”.The land use transformations are quantified through the GIS comparison of the land use maps of the years 1995, 1976, 1994 and 2003. The corresponding legends are transformed into the five categories of the first level CORINE Land Cover classes. The naturalness increases in the three territories throughout the period 1955-2003, but with different quantitative importance: limited for the territory of Medicina and progressively increasing from Borgo Tossignano to Castel del Rio. Urban areas increase too, but following a gradient opposite to the one concerning naturalness. The land use transformations in the “Nuovo circondario imolese” are similar to the trends reported for the same period in Italy as a whole and in many other European countries. Concerning the effects of land use transformations on the territory naturalness and biodiversity, our results highlight the critical state of the intensively used areas and the marginal areas. Some lines of action for a correct ecological planning of these different situations are suggested.