One century of land use changes in the metropolitan area of Milan (Italy)

This paper presents the possible contribution of multi-temporal Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data to the assessment of land-use modifications in the most important portion of the metropolitan area of Milan where rapid transformations, starting from urban areas and then gradually extending to rural areas, took place. The study area corresponds to the so called 'Great Milan' which includes a protected area, the 'South Milan Agricultural Park', where a widespread conflict between agricultural and urban land use has arisen. Park realisation will contribute improving agricultural activities and creating a belt for environment protection around the city. Digital thematic maps, digitizing Istituto Geografico Militare d'Italia cartography of 1888-90 and 1945-50, were extracted. Normalized Difference Vegetation Indices (NDVI) were produced from three Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper images of 1984, January, June and August, and a Multi-temporal Colour NDVI Composition (MCNC) output was produced. Maximum Likelihood Classification for land use mapping was applied both on MCNC data jointly with band 5 of June, and on 12 April 1990 Landsat TM image. Classification accuracy was assessed and results summarized. An historical analysis of land-use changes from XIX century up to today was performed by comparison of different surface classes from historical (1888-90 and 1945-50) and satellite (1984 and 1990) thematic maps. Results confirm the useful contribution of satellite remote sensing studying land-use/land-cover modifications in areas affected by phenomena of agriculture rapid transformation and residential or industrial development.