Monitoring Sensitive Areas To Desertification In Sardinia: The Contribute Of The Regional Agrometeorological Service

Abstract

It has been almost 10 years since the Agro-meteorological Service of Sardinia has been involved in studying and monitoring desertification phenomena (Bianco et al., 2000). Desertification is meant to be a dynamic process, temporally distributed, which negatively influences ecosystems., diminishing productivity potential of natural resources. The main causes can be identified in climate change and human impacts., as stressed by the definition of desertification given by United Nations Environmental Program ("land degradation in arid, semi-arid arid dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities". UNEP, 1994) and commonly adopted by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Research activities have been concentrated mostly on mapping the areas sensitive to desertification in Sardinia and investigating particularly the climatic indexes involved (mainly drought and aridity). A Geographic Information System was therefore set up and several thematic layers related to all different indicators obtained. The study was carried out on 16 areas of Sardinia at 1: 100,000 scale in collaboration with Sardinia Regional Extension Service. It was also implemented in the whole island territory at a 1:250,000 scale as a part of the National Action Plan against drought and desertification. So far it was used in the National Atlas of Desertification (Costantini et al., 2007) and in the Sardinia Water Protection Plan.