Landscape fragmentation as an indicator of coastal landscape quality: an application along the Apulian coast (southern Italy)

This work has been carried out within the framework of the IMCA (Integrated Monitoring of Coastal Areas) Research Project, among the activities aimed at drawing coastal landscape quality maps through the use of indicators derived from satellite RS images. The overall research project, derived from the experience of the European Landscape Convention, tackles the landscape quality issue via a multi temporal and spatial scale approach. The present contribution focuses on fragmentation as this phenomenon, as well as the loss of heterogeneity, initiated by urban settlement processes of dislocation and diffusion, represents the main cause of the landscape ecological efficiency decrease, of the area decay and of the beginning of diseconomy in its management.