Abstract
Metropolitan fringes in Southern Europe preserve, under different territorial contexts, natural habitats, relict woodlands, and mixed agro-forest systems acting as a sink of biodiversity and ecosystem services in ecologically vulnerable landscapes. Clarifying territorial and socioeconomic processes that underlie land-use change in metropolitan regions is relevant for forest conservation policies. At the same time, long-term dynamics of fringe forests in the northern Mediterranean basin have been demonstrated to be rather mixed, with deforestation up to the 1950s and a subsequent recovery more evident in recent decades. The present study makes use of Forest Transition Theory (FTT) to examine spatial processes of forest loss and expansion in metropolitan Rome, Central Italy, through local regressions elaborating two diachronic land-use maps that span more than 80 years (1936–2018) representative of different socioeconomic and ecological conditions. Our study evaluates the turnaround from net forest area loss to net forest area gain, considering together the predictions of the FTT and those of the City Life Cycle (CLC) theory that provides a classical description of the functioning of metropolitan cycles. The empirical findings of our study document a moderate increase in forest cover depending on the forestation of previously abandoned cropland as a consequence of tighter levels of land protection. Natural and human-driven expansion of small and isolated forest nuclei along fringe land was demonstrated to fuel a polycentric expansion of woodlands. The results of a Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) reveal the importance of metropolitan growth in long-term forest expansion. Forest–urban dynamics reflect together settlement sprawl and increased forest disturbance. The contemporary expansion of fringe residential settlements and peri-urban forests into relict agricultural landscapes claims for a renewed land management that may reconnect town planning, reducing the intrinsic risks associated with fringe woodlands (e.g., wildfires) with environmental policies preserving the ecological functionality of diversified agro-forest systems.
Highlights
Providing a global interpretation of socio-environmental changes across a development gradient, Forest Transition Theory (FTT) predicts the inherent shift from net forest area loss, typical of emerging economies, to net forest area expansion [1]
Accelerated rates of forest recovery have been observed in rural, upland districts west and north of Rome, which were originally devoted to shrublands and olive groves (e.g., ‘Sabina’ district)
Our study contributes to regional science suggesting how the notion of mono-centric urban expansion can be extended to dynamics related to other land use, namely forests, underlying socioeconomic mechanisms and territorial processes that are governed the intrinsic linkage between humans and nature at the base of regional landscape dynamics [8]
Summary
Providing a global interpretation of socio-environmental changes across a development gradient, Forest Transition Theory (FTT) predicts the inherent shift from net forest area loss, typical of emerging economies, to net forest area expansion [1]. The notion of ‘forest transition’ is associated intimately with underlying socioeconomic forces [10], such as urbanization, late industrialization, tourism growth, Land 2022, 11, 12 mixed agricultural–wildland ecosystems [2,3,4] This process has occurred in recent times via natural regeneration [5], active planting [6,7,8], or a combination of the two [9]. TThhee ddiiffffeerreenntt pprroocceesssseess lleeaaddiinngg ttoo ffoorreesstt ttrraannssiittiioonnss cclleeaarrllyy depend oonn tthheeloloccaall(t(eterrirtiotoriraila)l)cocnotnetxetx[t1[21]2. ]A. ltAhlothuoguhgshomsoemgengeerniceprircopcersosceesssceasn cbaenibdeenidtiefnietdifiefodrfoafrfalufflenutenctouconutrnitersie(sF(igFuigruere1)1, )r,ergegioinons saannddddiissttrriiccttss ddoo not nneecceessssaarriillyy eexxppeerriieennccee aa rreegguullaarr ppaatttteerrnn ooff ffoorreesstt ccoovveerr cchhaannggee oovveerr ttiimmee,, aanndd tthhee ccaauusseess aanndd eeffffeeccttss ooffffoorreessttttrraannssiittiioonnss mmaayyvvaarryyllaarrggeellyyoovveerrssppaaccee[[1122––1144]]..FFoorriinnssttaannccee,,uurrbbaanniizzaattiioonn ccaann ddeetteerrmmiinneeaaffoorreessttddeecclliinneeffrroommddiirreeccttcclleeaarrccuuttitninggoorrwwilidldfifrireess[[1155]],, bbaassiiccaallllyy aannsswweerriinnggttoo iinnccrreeaasseeddhhoouussiinnggddeemmaanndd((ee..gg..,,bbeeccaauusseeooff ppooppuullaattiioonn groowwtthh)) or real estate speculation, eessppeecciiaallllyy iinn ccoonntteexxttss wwiitthh lleessss rriiggiidd ppllaannnniinngg rruulleess oorr aaddooppttiinngg nneeww lliibbeerraall uurrbbaanniissmm sscchheemmeess [[1166]]
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