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Desertification Indicator System for Mediterranean Europe

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Assessment of sensitivity to desertification in Italy
Author: Maurizio Sciortino <sciortino@casaccia.enea.it>

The text is extracted from Sciortino, M. (2004) Review of existing assessment of sensitive areas in the Northern Mediterranean Region. Published in the proceedings of the MEDRAP project and also in Van-Camp et al (2004) Soil Thematic Strategy. Reports of the technical working groups established under the thematic soil strategy for soil protection. Volume II - Erosion EUR 21319 EN.

click here to download the full report.

In 1999, the initiative of the Italian National Committee to combat drought and desertification introduced in the Italian legislation (law 152/99) the concept of sensitive areas to desertification and the following year (2000) the Italian NAP was also approved. As a result of these legislative actions, administrative regions have been requested to identify their sensitive areas and many of them applied the MEDALUS (ESA) methodology.

Table: Italian assessments of sensitivity at regional and watershed scale based on the ESA methodology

Regions and watersheds Year Scale Institution
Sardinia 2003 1:100.000 Regional Agro-Meteorological Service (SAR s.r.l.)
Sicily 2001 1:250.000 Sicily Region-Territory and Environment Department
Sicily 2002 1:250.000 ENEA-INEA
Apulia 2001 1:350.000 Puglia Region-CNR (Research National Committe)
Apulia 2001 1:250.000 European Soil Bureau; Space Application Institute and Puglia Region
Basilicata 2001 1:250.000 Basilicata Region- CNR (Research National Committee)
Magra River 2001 1:25.000 Magra River Basin Authority
Sarno 2001 1:1.200.000 Sarno River Basin Authority
Left Sele 2001 1:1.200.000 Left Side of Sele River Basin Authority
Right Sele 2001 1:1.100.000 Right Side of Sele River Basin Authority

The application of the methodology by different groups produced a first regional assessment of desertification. Having applied different legend and threshold values among the classes, the sensitivity to desertification produced in the framework of the activities for the implementation of the Italian NAP, are still not comparable each other and therefore can be considered as a preliminary results. A coordination effort is now under way within the inter regional project DesertNet. In this project most of the Italian Regions (and some Spanish regions which are also partners in the project), adopted the ESA methodology with a high degree of comparability between maps. This allowed the visualization of regional maps (UNCCD-1) with very high spatial resolution and also contributed to raising the awareness of desertification outside the scientific community.

Click on logo for further information about DesertNet
Click on logo for link to the map of areas sensitive to desertification (ESAs) prepared for the Regione Basilicata by the Università della Basilicata under the auspices of DesertNet.
Click on logo for link to the map of areas sensitive to desertification (ESAs) prepared for the Regione Toscana by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche under the auspices of DesertNet.