A Geospatial Decision Support System for Supporting the Assessment of Land Degradation in Europe

Piero Manna (), Antonietta Agrillo, Marialaura Bancheri, Marco Di Leginio, Giuliano Ferraro, Giuliano Langella, Florindo Antonio Mileti, Nicola Riitano and Michele Munafò
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Piero Manna: Institute for Mediterranean Agricultural and Forestry Systems (ISAFOM), National Research Council (CNR), 80055 Portici, Italy
Antonietta Agrillo: Institute for Mediterranean Agricultural and Forestry Systems (ISAFOM), National Research Council (CNR), 80055 Portici, Italy
Marialaura Bancheri: Institute for Mediterranean Agricultural and Forestry Systems (ISAFOM), National Research Council (CNR), 80055 Portici, Italy
Marco Di Leginio: Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), 00144 Rome, Italy
Giuliano Ferraro: CRISP Research Center, Department of Agriculture, University of Napoli Federico II, 80055 Naples, Italy
Giuliano Langella: CRISP Research Center, Department of Agriculture, University of Napoli Federico II, 80055 Naples, Italy
Florindo Antonio Mileti: CRISP Research Center, Department of Agriculture, University of Napoli Federico II, 80055 Naples, Italy
Nicola Riitano: Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), 00144 Rome, Italy
Michele Munafò: Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), 00144 Rome, Italy

Land, 2024, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: Nowadays, Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) is on the political agenda as one of the main objectives in order to respond to the increasing degradation processes affecting soils and territories. Nevertheless, proper implementation of environmental policies is very difficult due to a lack of the operational, reliable and easily usable tools necessary to support political decisions when identifying problems, defining the causes of degradation and helping to find possible solutions. It is within this framework that this paper attempts to demonstrate a new valuable web-based operational LDN tool as a component of an already running Spatial Decision Support System (S-DSS) developed on a Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure (GCI). The tool could be offered to EU administrative units (e.g., municipalities) so that they may better evaluate the state and the impact of land degradation in their territories. The S-DSS supports the acquisition, management and processing of both static and dynamic data, together with data visualization and on-the-fly computing, in order to perform modelling, all of which is potentially accessible via the Web. The land degradation data utilized to develop the LDN tool refer to the SDG 15.3.1 indicator and were obtained from a platform named Trends.Earth, designed to monitor land change by using earth observations, and post-processed to correct some of the major artefacts relating to urban areas. The tool is designed to support land planning and management by producing data, statistics, reports and maps for any EU area of interest. The tool will be demonstrated through a short selection of practical case studies, where data, tables and stats are provided to challenge land degradation at different spatial extents. Currently, there are WEBGIS systems to visualize land degradation maps but—to our knowledge—this is the first S-DSS tool enabling customized LDN reporting at any NUTS (nomenclature of territorial units for statistics) level for the entire EU territory.

Keywords: land degradation; LDN; NDVI; environmental awareness; spatial decision support system; modelling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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