Planning restoration in a cultural landscape in Italy using an object-based approach and historical analysis

We present a proposal for a standardized method to develop restoration practices capable of increasing the efficacy of landscape management and create the necessary bridge between restoration planning and landscape ecology. This methodology was developed in order to identify the reference landscape and to define areas within that landscape that possess different degrees of potential for restoration purposes in a cultural landscape. We utilized retrospective data to compare former ecosystem arrangements, taking into account ecological, spatial and temporal issues, such as historical information on changes in land use, in addition to diachronically analyzed aerial photos taken between 1954 and 2002, using an object-based approach. The test area is a Nature Reserve in Tuscany (Italy) that preserves the cultural landscape of biancane badlands – erosion forms generated on Plio-Pleistocene marine clay outcrops – which is characterized by a high erosion rate. In the first step, a land cover map was obtained by image segmentation on the 1954 photographs and the patches classified as “target habitats” were used as a selection mask on the 2002 image. As a second step, a more detailed land cover map was created for the areas selected as masks in the previous step. Hence, the target habitats that showed stability (persistence) between the two dates were excluded from the analysis, as well as the land cover classes not suitable for restoration (broad-leaved forests, arable land, artificial and other agricultural areas). The selected sites, covered by four vegetation types in the 2002 land cover map, accounted for approximately 91 ha. The method focuses on selecting sites for restoration in order to reduce efforts and negative impact and to maximize the restoration results.