Use of soil
Land consumption is a process due to anthropic activities that causes the loss of a fundamental environmental resource by replacing land originally intended for agriculture, natural or semi-natural areas, with urbanized areas. Net land consumption (also net land take) is calculated as the difference between land consumption and the increase of agricultural, natural and semi-natural surfaces due to restoration, demolition, de-sealing, or other restoring actions. Land use and land cover on a national scale are monitored by the National System for Environmental Protection (SNPA) and the results are included in the Annual Report “Land consumption, territorial dynamics and ecosystem services”. The database can be consulted with ISPRA viewer, with Geomapviewer and is available as OGC service.
Land cover is defined as the biophysical characteristics of earth’s surface. According to Directive 2007/2/CE, land cover is the physical and biological cover of the earth’s surface, including artificial surfaces, agricultural areas, forests, semi-natural areas, wetlands, and water bodies. ISPRA, exploiting the potential of the Copernicus program, produces the high spatial resolution Land Cover Map. This product is the national reference for analyses on the state of the territory and landscape, and for studies about natural and anthropogenic processes.The database can be consulted with ISPRA viewer, with Geomapviewer and is available as OGC service.
Data about land cover, land use and the changes between the different classes are among the most frequently requested information in order to develop management and sustainable land planning strategies, in order to provide basic information to support decision-making processes at the Community, National and Local levels, and to verify the effectiveness of environmental policies. In this context, the European Corine Land Cover (CLC) initiative was initiated in 1985 for detecting and monitoring the characteristics of land cover and land use, in order to dynamically assess the state of the environment. Only the CLC data ensure a complete, homogeneous European and National framework, with a time series that includes almost thirty years of information (1990, 2000, 2006, 2012, 2018).The database can be consulted with ISPRA viewer, with Geomapviewer and is available as OGC service.