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A Quantitative Measure of Habitat Quality to Support the Implementation of Sustainable Urban Planning Measures

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Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2017 (ICCSA 2017)

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Abstract

The 2030 Agenda by United Nations highlights the necessity of undertake concrete actions to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”. However, human activities on land use are strongly threatening habitat quality, causing their fragmentation and a dramatic loss of biodiversity all over the world. This paper proposes an application of the InVEST Habitat Quality model as a tool to support the definition of sustainable development policies able to favour the preservation of habitat structures while promoting their exploitation as cultural and landscape assets. The model is applied to the Basilicata Region (Southern Italy). Results show how modelling the impacts of human activities on biodiversity and ecosystem services can strongly help planning activities in distinguish those areas that should undergo to a conservation regime to preserve habitat integrity from those which are most prone to transformations, taking advantage by the social and economic benefit deriving from the human activities connected to their use.

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Author Contribution

Authors contributed equally to this work. Specifically, experiment design and writing of the manuscript was developed jointly by all authors. Rosa Epifani and Gabriele Nolé performed the experiments and analysed the data. Federico Amato and Beniamino Murgante interpreted the results and developed the discussion.

Conflict of Interests. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, University of Basilicata, Viale dell’Ateneo Lucano 10, 85100, Potenza, Italy

    Rosa Epifani, Federico Amato & Beniamino Murgante

  2. IMAA, Italian National Research Council, C.da Santa Loja, Tito Scalo, 85050, Potenza, Italy

    Gabriele Nolé

Authors
  1. Rosa Epifani
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  2. Federico Amato
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  3. Beniamino Murgante
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  4. Gabriele Nolé
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Federico Amato .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy

    Osvaldo Gervasi

  2. University of Basilicata, Potenza, Italy

    Beniamino Murgante

  3. Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria

    Sanjay Misra

  4. University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    Giuseppe Borruso

  5. Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Carmelo M. Torre

  6. University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Ana Maria A.C. Rocha

  7. Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    David Taniar

  8. Kyushu Sangyo University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Bernady O. Apduhan

  9. Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia

    Elena Stankova

  10. University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    Alfredo Cuzzocrea

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Epifani, R., Amato, F., Murgante, B., Nolé, G. (2017). A Quantitative Measure of Habitat Quality to Support the Implementation of Sustainable Urban Planning Measures. In: Gervasi, O., et al. Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2017. ICCSA 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10409. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62407-5_42

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62407-5_42

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