Sustainable Development, Territorial Disparities in Land Resources, and Soil Degradation: A Multi-Temporal Approach

Marco Maialetti, Luca Salvati () and Francesco Maria Chelli
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Marco Maialetti: Independent Researcher, I-00195 Rome, Italy
Luca Salvati: Department of Methods and Models for Economics, Territory and Finance (MEMOTEF), Faculty of Economics, Sapienza University of Rome, Via del Castro Laurenziano 9, I-00161 Rome, Italy
Francesco Maria Chelli: Department of Economics and Social Science, Polytechnic University of Marche, Piazza R. Martelli 8, I-60121 Ancona, Italy

Resources, 2024, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-13

Abstract: The present study investigates territorial disparities in selected socioeconomic forces and environmental factors underlying soil degradation that may lead to early desertification processes in a dry Mediterranean region exposed to increasing human pressure. To verify if spatial disparities in land resources have increased over time, a standard approach based on the Environmentally Sensitive Area Index (ESAI) was adopted to evaluate sixty years of territorial transformations in Latium, Central Italy, a region prone to intense processes of land resource depletion. The ESAI provides a standard, holistic assessment of soil degradation based on the estimation of four different ‘resource qualities’ (climate, soil, vegetation, and land use) and their change over sufficiently long time windows; in this study, the procedure was run at three reference years (1960, 1990, and 2020). The observed divergence in soil degradation levels between coastal and inland districts arose during the study period, with a consequent reduction in the local-scale variability of the ESAI. Such differential processes observed along the elevation gradient in Central Italy are likely due to anthropogenic factors affecting land use and leveraging crop intensification in flat districts and farmland abandonment in steep areas. New findings to be achieved in the context of human impacts on land resource depletion are regarded as an original contribution to the study of early desertification processes in advanced economies.

Keywords: land degradation; regional approach; environmental quality; indicators; Central Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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