Land mosaic naturalness evaluation: a proposal for European landscapes

The present work proposes a criterion to classify landscape into naturalness systems using four levels of conservation: High naturalness, Semi-natural, Agricultural, Artificial. As a case study Sicily (Italy) was chosen. The methodology has been applied to reclassify Corine Land Cover data and obtain a Naturalness map. The area of study has been divided into reference units; these land units are the result of the overlay of the bioclimatic map and of the geomorphologic map. A new index to evaluate landscape naturalness and conservation is proposed, which has been calculated for each land unit. The highest value is located on the Nebrodi Mountains, a Regional Park where extensive beech woods…