Effects of Land Use-Land Cover Thematic Resolution on Environmental Evaluations

Raffaele Pelorosso,Andrea Petroselli,Ciro Apollonio,Duccio Rocchini

doi:10.3390/rs13071232

Raffaele Pelorosso, Andrea Petroselli + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13071232

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Abstract

Land use/land cover (LULC) maps are a key input in environmental evaluations for the sustainable planning and management of socio-ecological systems. While the impact of map spatial resolution on environmental assessments has been evaluated by several studies, the effect of thematic resolution (the level of detail of LU/LC typologies) is discordant and still poorly investigated. In this paper, four scenarios of thematic resolutions, corresponding to the four levels of the CORINE classification scheme, have been compared in a real case study of landscape connectivity assessment, a major aspect for the biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service provision. The PANDORA model has been employed to investigate the effects of LULC thematic resolution on Bio-Energy Landscape Connectivity (BELC) at the scale of the whole system, landscape units, and single land cover patches, also in terms of ecosystem services. The results show different types of impacts on landscape connectivity due to the changed spatial pattern of the LULC classes across the four thematic resolution scenarios. Moreover, the main priority areas for conservation objectives and future sustainable urban expansion have been identified. Finally, several indications are given for supporting practitioners and researchers faced with thematic resolution issues in environmental assessment and land use planning.

Highlights

Published: 24 March 2021Human exploitation of land considerably modifies the landscape, altering the Earth’s topography, the energy balance, and the biogeochemical cycles, which in turn affect the provision of ecosystem services [1,2,3,4]
We propose to investigate the effect of the different spatial distribution of land use and land cover (LULC) classes as a predictor of the impact of thematic resolution on landscape connectivity
We argue that, according to [35], measured Bio-Energy Landscape Connectivity (BELC) would not be sensitive to the thematic resolution if the rank order of Biological Territorial Capacity (BTC) values is maintained across LC classes

Summary

Introduction

Published: 24 March 2021Human exploitation of land considerably modifies the landscape, altering the Earth’s topography, the energy balance, and the biogeochemical cycles, which in turn affect the provision of ecosystem services [1,2,3,4]. Land use and land cover (LULC) maps production, processing, and employment are central themes for remote sensing as well as for environmental sciences and landscape planning, in particular in urban and periurban areas [5,6,7]. The scale of a LULC map is commonly defined by a spatial extension (the represented area), a spatial resolution, and a thematic resolution. The spatial resolution is usually related to the cell size and minimum mapping unit for raster and vector maps, respectively. The thematic resolution, called the class or categorical resolution, represents the level of detail of discrete (or qualitative) variables (LU/LC typologies) with known and definable boundaries [10]. The smaller (or bigger) the raster cell or the minimum mapping unit are, the higher (or lower) the spatial resolution

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