An Analysis of the Land Use Sustainability Index (LUSI) at Territorial Scale Based on Corine Land Cover

Sustainable development introduced a new paradigm in human society, merging environmental, economical and social aspects, with the main aim to ensure future generations the same opportunity we had. The use and the assemblage of territory in a given area, is the cause, and at the same time the result of the economic development, and the expression of the human impacts on the environment. Land use change, habitat disruption, and consequently the reduction of ecosystem services that could be potentially provided by the territory, are often considered one of the main threats for the future of our planet. Starting from the analysis of some of the existing approaches for the evaluation of environmental sustainability, in this paper we present a GIS approach, based on the use of the Corine Land Cover (CLC), and other sources of geographical data, aimed to produce several thematic Environmental Sustainability Indicators, and one synthetic index. Corine Land Cover represent a consolidated system for the classification and monitoring of the use of territories, it provides consistent information on land cover from the 1990 across Europe. At the present time the Corine Land Cover database covers 30 countries in Europe. In our paper we describe a methodology based on the use of CLC for providing a deep evaluation of the environmental sustainability through the analysis of factors like the landscape and habitat fragmentation, the level of biodiversity, the degree of anthropization and soil sealing, the arable land availability. The calculation of these indicators has been realized applying mathematical equations to a set of geographic data; these equations have been implement using model techniques in a GIS environment. ; JRC.DDG.H.7 - Land management and natural hazards